SÍM

SÍM Residency presents: Nadine Baldow – A Pleasure To Be Alive at SÍM Gallery, ONLINE EXHIBITION.

Video: https://vimeo.com/828756103
3D Exhibition: https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=dWsqGHQuLvm

Nadine Baldow’s practice is informed by the current geological era, known as the Anthropocene, where traces of human activity are embedded within planet earth. Are we still part of nature? Did estrangement from nature start with a fence? Did the first artificial boundary create a gap between man and nature?
Since 2020, Baldow's site-specific sculptures are informed by the ongoing series of Landscape Investigations – TOPOPHILIA, starting in the NorthWest of rural Ireland. Until now, she investigated the rural, but culturally impacted landscapes of Ireland, Slovenia, Lithuania, and Iceland.

“A PLEASURE TO BE ALIVE focuses on the bodily experience of being in landscape – with its pleasures and its harshness alike. The last three months, I concentrated on repetitive rituals to be fully present in my body and in the environment. Besides the act of walking the land and exposing myself to every weather this Island has to offer – I meditated on natural phenomena in landscape and delved into rituals with hot and icy water.

All landscapes, I've investigated so far – despite their beauty – carry a heavy human handprint. Iceland is no exception with its treeless land and the effects of livestock grazing,but the power of nature is highly present in this geologically young landmass. During the process of walking the land and observing the challenging condition this young place creates, I felt drawn to the presence of mortality in this landscape. My own existence, my body feeling the land, stands in contradiction to these materials, such as bones, sculls and horns. The remains of these dead beings indicate how these animals died – while some died of natural causes, others found their death through direct human force.

A PLEASURE TO BE ALIVE is a conglomerate of materials found in the volcanic landscapes of Iceland that tell stories about their pain and joy of existence.” Iceland, April 2023