Time allegedly heals all wounds, but they don’t disappear completely. A scar will always remain. An evidence of what has happened and a trace of the skin and body tissue’s repairing process. As time passes, the marks on our body increases, wrinkles will start to show, skin cells will change, and hair pigment is reduced. No one knows exactly how and why our body will change as we get older. Some theories claim that aging is caused by injuries from ultraviolet light over time, wear and tear on the body, or byproducts of metabolism. Other theories view aging as a predetermined process controlled by our genes.
Time, process and natural science is recurring themes in Anna Bak’s artistic practice. Through her work, Bak often explores humans’ conflict-filled or ambivalent encounters with nature. Her works often contains an existential melancholy or desolation. The solo exhibition Through the impact of time my scars will show is no exception.
In 2018, Anna Bak spent 30 days isolated in a Swedish forest, as a personal experiment and a study of the depiction of the artistic archetype, that retreats to nature to gain a special self-reliance and inspiration. At the beginning of the 30 days, the artist buried two pieces of fabric in the forest, one was left there for the same duration as her own stay at the site, another was left for a whole year and later dug up by her in the summer of 2019. These pieces of fabric with their molded stains and dissolved fibers, fascinated Bak to experiment more and examine the imprints that arises in the process when fabric mixed with organic materials is left aside for different intervals. This interest has initiated the works presented in this exhibition
Created under complex circumstances between the controlled and the uncontrollable, the innate and the obtained, the original and the supplemented, the works comment on our own human existence – Our lifespan, impressions and actions that leave traces in us and shape us into who we are. As such, the works, with their appearance and titles, bring to mind questions of heritage and environment – what has been given to us in advance and what we are responsible for ourselves, including the actions and circumstances that can be destructive and scar us for life.
Anna Bak (b. 1985) currently lives and works in Copenhagen. She took her masters in fine arts at the Funen Academy of Arts in 2012, with a supplementing exchange at a Fulbright scholarship at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana. In 2014 she was selected for the post-academic research institute, Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht.
The exhibition is supported by The Danish Arts Foundation
