Past

Anna Bak: Hermit

25 Jan 2020 – 16 Mar 2019

But what if the dream does not hold water? What if escaping the noise of the big city and choosing ‘natural living’ fails to live up to what we see on film? What if all our neuroses, anxieties and inadequacies fail to evaporate once we throw on an Icelandic sweater and head into the woods?

The story of the artist withdrawing to commune with nature to find divine inspiration or their inner voice is a familiar theme – from Thoreau’s classical Walden on his retreat to the untouched nature of the US, to the name of one of the oldest art museums in the world, the State Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, referencing the myth of art best being contemplated in splendid isolation. Since graduating from the Funen Art Academy, Anna Bak has dedicated her art practice to investigating the myths and paradoxes spun by the encounter between the artist and isolation in the wilderness, and the destinies associated with that encounter. In previous works she has explored how both botanists and amateur scientists were ridiculed or ostracised during their own lifetime, as well as investigated the political – and potentially lethal – sides of escaping into nature to prepare for doomsday in ‘prepper’ culture, or the iconic example of the Unabomber sending letter bombs to the heart of civilisation from his self-imposed exile deep in the woods.