camilla berner

Blændet

Naboplanter / Companion Plants Group exhibition

Den Frie Udstillingsbygning

2024

Description coming soon

Porten Vridsløse

In collaboration with Laurits Gulløv

2023

Sightseeing is an exhibition that explores the relationship between the visible and the invisible, developed in a dialogic collaboration between visual artists Camilla Berner and Laurits Gulløv.

The title Sightseeing relates to the act of being a spectator to a scenario or arriving at a point of interest. Sightseeing is often associated with a type of tourism that is based on seeing but is often superficial and non-committal. At Vridsløselille Prison, we are tourists visiting for free. We can see the buildings, cells, and walls, but not the life that are hidden inside. In many ways, one can say the same about our relationship with the earth: We see it, but we feel uncommitted to it; it is a sight we can enjoy but also always choose to ignore.

In the exhibition, Gulløv and Berner take as their starting point the specific architecture of Vridsløselille Prison, which is characterized by being designed as a panopticon—a type of prison architecture created so that the fewest possible guards can oversee the most inmates, while the inmates, in turn, do not know when they are being watched. The word panopticon literally means "the all-seeing."

The earth is often associated with the opposite—invisibility, hiding, or blindness, as illustrated by metaphors such as "going underground" or "burying one's head in the sand." The earth has been used to make things disappear—graveyards, landfills, nuclear waste deposits—but is also home to wildlife, which is often, notably, either weak-sighted or completely blind. Gulløv and Berner have developed an exhibition format that attempts to understand how the relationship between the visible and the invisible often distorts the proportions in our understanding of the world.

The exhibition consists of two parts, which dialogically reflect Berner and Gulløv's respective artistic practices. The first thing the viewer encounters in the exhibition is five semi-transparent organic sculptures, which almost seep from the prison cells into the corridor. The cells are open but are barred by delicate semi-transparent insect nets of the type used in conventional crop cultivation. The insect nets allow the viewer to look inside the cells, where one can glimpse a series of rickety stacks of the characteristic yellow bricks from the ongoing demolition of the prison.

The second part consists of a series of performance talks, which took place during the exhibition period in the context of an installation made of transparent plexiglass. The angles in the installation refer to the pentagonal shape of the panopticon and are designed so that two people can have a conversation through the glass. On three occasions, a relevant guest were invited to participate in a public conversation. The invited guests are Nathalia Brichet for a discussion on the relationship between earth and invisibility; anthropologist and farmer Sille Skovgaard for a discussion on regenerative farming; and professor in philosophy Aksel Haaning for a discussion on views of nature and forgotten stories about nature from the Middle Ages.

All conversations are filmed and will be online soon.

Planternes privatliv

Solo exhibition

Kunsthal Kongegaarden

2023

In Kongegaarden, Camilla Berner has created an original and cohesive exhibition that connects society's increasing limitation of plants' ability to spread their pollen with the historical hindrance of women's sexual opportunities.

Inspired by David Attenborough's documentary "The Private Life of Plants," which has given name to the exhibition and describes, among other things, the sexual life of plants and the pivotal role of pollen in the ecosystem as life-affirming plant seeds, Camilla Berner has specifically drawn inspiration from the nature and dark history of Sprogø, when the island was home to women who at the were defined as "morally defective". They were isolated in the middle of the sea and often forcibly sterilized in Korsør.

The site-specific exhibition focuses on the reproduction of a single plant; the endangered yellow Bedstraw also known as Lady's Bedstraw and spans five rooms, where the elements of the flower are artistically interpreted and enlarged to an enormous scale, allowing the audience to assume an insect's perspective. By using enlargement as a device and creating a new relationship between humans, bodies, and plants, Berner's works create new insights into the razor-sharp balance and existence of nature.

In the first room, the audience, like an insect seeking food, is led through a conical funnel that leads to a large clay dish with real pollen. In the second room, the floor is covered with several hundred sculptural works shaped like pollen from Lady's Bedstraw by 56 local women.

The endangered plant has been used as bedding in stories of Jesus' crib and in Nordic mythology, it was considered a sacred plant dedicated to the love goddess Freja. Medicinally, the plant has been used to stop menstruation and complications during childbirth.

In the third room, visitors encounter a narrow passage with walls on both sides lined with pieces of rope dipped in yellow wax, as well as objects inspired by the yellow bedstraw's style. In the fourth room, a photographic enlargement of yellow bedstraw seeds is displayed, and in the garden (room 5), there is a small bed with the plant from Sprogø. A life cycle is complete.

Pollen is essential for nature's crucial reproduction but is often met with human hostility, as the small "sperm cells" are known for their allergenic properties. Camilla Berner's exhibition focuses on plant life as a necessary coexistence with other species and challenges our ability to understand and respect the biodiversity and ecosystems of the planet.

If we destroy a plant's habitat and the species it coexists with to reproduce itself, we not only lose a single flower but a range of species. Suppression of plant reproductive ability can lead to massive ecosystem destruction and ultimately affect us as part of the food chain.

Photos: Jenny Sundby

Interview i Kunsten.nu

A Mythical Plant

Group exhibition

Flora Italica

Thorvaldsen's Museum

2023

The giant hogweed is widely despised. The towering umbellifer overshadows other plants, its sap can cause eczema, and it spreads uncontrollably. A persistent urban legend exists, a myth that it was Thorvaldsen who introduced the hogweed from Italy, when his sculptures were transported to Denmark. The large umbels with thousands of seeds were supposedly used as packing material in the transport crates. Myths are created to provide understanding and to explain reality; where did this giant plant come from? However, this species was really introduced as an ornamental plant by the Botanical Garden in Copenhagen in 1803, and not from Southern Europe, but from the Caucasus. In Camilla Berner's work, the beauty of the plant's impressive height, blooming umbels, and lobed leaves is evident.

Thorvaldsen’s works were actually packed in hay from Italian meadows. During the unpacking of the crates, seeds from the hay began to sprout on the exposed ground around the museum. This led to the emergence of a small meadow of Italian species that bloomed over several summers. The young, hopeful botanist Johan Lange (who later became the head of the Botanical Garden) was fascinated—he collected the species and created botanical herbarium sheets with them. These sheets make it possible to reconstruct the history today.

Plants are central to the world and to all life in general—they provide oxygen and everything else we need to live. Based on the tension between a fantastic story and the attempt to explain a reality, somewhere between facts and feelings, the work "A Mythical Plant" explores the narratives about the plant kingdom, about the parts of the plant world we embrace, and the parts we do not wish to embrace. The myth, that served as an explanation of reality, and which for a time became reality.

The hogweed as an exotic plant was in its time a manifestation of a worldview and nature perception that cultivated enlightenment and the exotic as two sides of the same formation. It was introduced and later (rightly) became a despised foreign plant. It is highly invasive and toxic. It is the current perception of nature that nature should be "cleansed" and controlled in the hope of minimizing our loss of species. The hogweed is among the worst of them all, and every effort is made to eradicate it. Berner’s herbarium sheet of the hogweed in the exhibition should be seen as a counterpart to the actual story of the real Italian species used as packaging around Thorvaldsen's sculptures. But a herbarium sheet is also history writing, and may one day serve as evidence of the existence of something we will have succeeded in eradicating by then. The question is how we should view our own actions as those who control the plants? What view of nature do we ourselves represent?

Photos: Mads Holm

Review in Berlingske: Thorvaldsens Museum er blomstret op

Review in Kulturinformation

Det jeg aldrig før har set

Exhibition

Willumsen's Museum

2024

For the exhibition What I Have Never Seen Before, Berner has created site-specific works for the museum – both outdoors and indoors. Based on Willumsen's largely unknown herbarium, Berner's exhibition unfolds as an exploration of concepts of the foreign and the exotic. She closely examines how the fascination with what appears exotic often has stood and still stands in the way of noticing what literally lies at our feet – the nearby, ordinary, but perhaps also humble nature.

In the year 1900, Willumsen travels to New York in the hope of starting an international career in America. The encounter with the new and for him foreign world is overwhelming. He is fascinated by the bustling life of the city but also by the wild nature he encounters in the areas around New York, and he begins to collect plants on a large scale. In a letter dated June 23, 1900, to his friend Johan Rohde, he describes the encounter with the American nature as follows: "The forests contain a lot of plants, both trees and herbs, that I have never seen before. There is a multitude of variations. I have begun to form a herbarium as an aid for the art. The external impressions are so overwhelming that the inner life must remain silent for the time being." The plants were later collected in 14 large folders that are part of the Willumsen’s Museum collection.

In Berner's hands, Willumsen's encounter with and collection of the foreign nature gain renewed relevance and contributes, through her artistic processing, to a broader insight into the way we approach the nature around us. What do we notice? Why do we notice some things in particular and not others? What is given value and what is not? And what do we pass without noticing? What really is foreign to us and our gaze, and what is our gaze foreign – or blind – towards? Berner's new works revolve around how the gaze directs our way in the world, and how our cultural baggage can cause us to overlook entirely essential elements. Together with biologist Jon Feilberg, Berner has reviewed Willumsen's herbarium, and it turned out that the species Willumsen collected are actually not that exotic. Instead, several of the species are European, imported to North America – even during the years when Willumsen saw and collected them. The foreign and exotic that Willumsen encountered was thus not so foreign or exotic after all. However, for Willumsen – explorer, tourist, far away from home, and driven by a search for the new, it must have been perceived as such. Seen through his eyes, this nature appeared foreign and exotic and prompted collection and special appreciation.

By re-actualizing this exotic gaze, Berner examines how we can give new value to that, which grows around us by simply becoming better at noticing it. By training our gaze to become better at discovering the magic and diversity in the very ordinary nature, we are also better equipped to create more fertile conditions for its survival. Berner moves close to the plants. Very close, so that even the invisible, the root network, and the microscopic pollen units become visible. Through Berner's artistic attention, the world of wild forms and surprising richness that surround us – every day – is now revealed.

The catalog is published as a book including Berner's total installation, where the indoor work is reproduced in its entirety in the book's central pages. The illustrations are accompanied by two articles. Louise Bugge Jacobsen, museum curator at the Willumsen’s Museum, focuses on the time leading up to and immediately after Willumsen's collection of the plants for the herbarium and examines how the collection and approach to nature can be traced in his artistic method and practice immediately after. Line Marie Thorsen, Postdoc and Deputy Center Leader at the Center for Applied Ecological Thinking (CApE), with her article, closely examines Camilla Berner's practice and looks, as a form of field study, at how parallels can be drawn between Berner and Willumsen in method and approach to the artistic field. The catalog is graphically designed by Claus Due. Among the partners, special thanks are given to biologist Jon Feilberg for species identification in the herbarium, biologist Morten F. Mortensen from the National Museum for pollen analysis, photographer Roberto Fortuna for photographing for print, and photographer David Stjernholm for his photographing and digital accessibility of Willumsen's herbarium.

This is an excerpt from the preface to the catalog by Lisbeth Lund, Museum Director, and Louise Bugge Jacobsen, Museum Curator, Willumsens Museum.

Photos: Malle Madsen

Alle kender en bjørneklo

Group exhibition

Amazing Nature

Art Centre Silkeborg

2023

The spread of the giant hogweed really took off in the 1960s, when the grazing of open areas stopped, and even more in the 1970s, when it became popular to decorate your home with the dried seed stands. The giant hogweed blooms on the second year's shoots, and it can grow as tall as 4-5 m. The leaves can be 3 m wide, and the diameter of the stem can widen with 10 cm in one year. Each plant can make as many as 20.000 seeds.

Giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) is an invasive plant. It originates in the Caucasus, and today the plant destroys the biodiversity in the areas, where it grows in the Danish nature. In the 1830s, when it was introduced in Denmark, it was seen as a beautiful ornamental plant for botanical gardens and manor parks. The consequences were unknown in the 19th century, and plants were being exchanged on a large scale around the world. People were curious about the foreign and saw it as an extension of the political, intellectual, and scientific interest in acquiring knowledge about the world. It was the beginning of a pronounced interest in exotic plants, which still exists today. Exotic plants have become a common part of every home and garden. At the same time, we know less and less about our local common flora, and in relation to the biodiversity crisis, the loss of knowledge is challenging for our ability to care for it.

The installation in the inner courtyard consists of giant hogweed plants, that has been dug up locally in Silkeborg and planted in pots that align with the garden trend of our time. The pots are stacked with references to the artist Brancusi's work "Endless Column" (1938), which repeated stacking thematized the concept of infinity. What we continuously plant in our pots are most often exotic plants. It is a repetition captured in an ideal of beauty found in exotic plants.

Solo exhibition

FABRIKKEN Afd. AC

Amagercentret

2022

The work 'Turning Rocks' reflects on our relationship with the lasting as decisive for our relation to the landscape, for how we take care of our planet and nature – and for our shopping habits.

We usually associate large stones with prehistoric landscapes – old landscapes with authenticity that are lasting and unchanging. That is one of the reasons why they are believed to possess great power and why they, in the past, have been used for many things that needed to be secured and settled, such as kings, power, faith etc. In Kongelunden in Amager there is thus ‘the wedding stone' which up until our time was sought out by newlyweds in the belief that if the stone witnessed the wedding, the marriage would never end. Today, we are more fascinated by large stones in relation to their significance in relation to the natural history and less for their spiritual significance.

‘Turning Rocks’ is installed in the revolving doors at the entrance to the Amager Shopping Mall. A large stone is placed in each of the two exhibition spaces in the revolving doors. This would not have been physically possible had it not been that the stones are artificial. The expectations of what is possible is being challenged; of weight, and not least of the idea of what kind of product is being advertised. Where advertising normally is meant to create an urge to buy, the artificial stones are almost introvert. They are quiet and awaiting - they don't want to sell you anything – instead they may be waiting for something or someone else to give them meaning and significance.

By turning something that seem everlasting and solid into something transitory and fragile in the context of a shopping mall, Berner seeks to direct the focus to the ephemeral of the things surrounding us, and to the view we have of the world, of nature and perhaps of our next shopping trip. A stone can also simply be seen as something that can be transformed into building material and thereby become ephemeral. It raises questions about the lasting of the physical world as opposed to an immaterial, maybe spiritual, maybe hard-core consumerism world and about what will last.

Photo credit: Oskar Koliander

Planteportræt

Art in public space

Part of Artist in residence project in Haderslev Municipality

2022

‘Plant Portrait’ is an art project that explores our relationship with plants. The project is based on the concept of 'plant blindness', which was defined in 1999 by two American researchers, Schussler and Wandersee. Cognitively and physiologically, we tend to overlook plants because they don't make any sudden movements. They do not pose any danger to us. Through evolution, our sensory apparatus has developed to see and be aware of things that moves - like animals, because animals, at least in the past, would often pose a danger to us. Therefore, we find it difficult to distinguish between different plants in a larger mass of greenery. It is not as easy for us to see the details of plants as it is for us to distinguish between different animal species. Furthermore, it is easier for us to sympathize with that which is similar to us. We recognize ourselves to a greater extent in that which, like us, has two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. And that which has our sympathy, we are more prone to take good care of. A lot more animals receive larges fund donations than plants do. And far more animals have been given emotions and character in fairy tales and films than plants, and this also brings the animal world closer to us than the plant world. But the plants are essential for a lot of things in the world, not only in terms of species diversity, but also because they are the lungs of the world. They produce oxygen and the air that we breathe, and they are food that we (and other animals) eat.

‘Plant portrait’ consists of 75 portraits of plants collected by students in the 6th grade in Haderslev Municipality from Øsby in the east, Starup, Hammelev, Over Jerstal and to Gram in the west.

Plants and children were portrayed in workshops held by Camilla Berner in locations where the vegetation is particularly characteristic in connection with the Ice Age landscape and the local natural history. The students were given the task of collecting and identifying plants.

The plants were collected in Abkær Mose, on Starup Hede, at Tørning Mølle, Flovt Strand and Lunden in Gram.

The portraits are printed in the format of election posters. From mid-June to mid-August, you could see them hanging from the lampposts just like real election posters; on Årøsund Landevej in Øsby and Starup, Hammelev Bygade, Hovedgaden in Over Jerstal and Stadionvej in Gram.

As part of the students' collection of the plants, they created a photo herbarium that documents the collected plants. All plant portraits and the full photo herbarium is on view at the website of Kunsthal 6100 HERE.

75 photographs in 2 copies CMYK print on channel boards, plastic, 60x80 cm.

Camilla Berner collaborated with Haderslev Municipality throughout 2022 as part of the 1-year residency-program of The Danish Arts Foundation.

The project was created in collaboration with Kunsthal 6100 and Haderslev Municipality, and is supported by The Danish Arts Foundation, Sydbank, Boligfonden KUBEN, Haderslev Municipality and Kunsthal 6100.

Flyttet Istid

Five permanent public art works

Part of Vestegnens Kulturuge

Albertslund, Høje-Taastrup, Ishøj, Vallensbæk & Hvidovre

2021

Five artificial glacial erratic rocks are placed in five municipalities in Vestegnen, Denmark. Together, they form ICE AGE RELOCATED, an artwork by artist Camilla Berner. With the work as a prism, the artist wants to highlight the landscape and the layers we can observe in the terrain – from the shaping of the landscape during the Ice Age, to the impact of urbanisation and how we are connected to natures epic story. Perhaps our experience of the landscape could be richer if we opened our eyes to the layers in the landscape. If we consider the city to be the most recent layer in the landscape – what other layers might there be? The Ice Age, before the Ice Age, historically, and to the present time.

If you take a tour of all the sculptures, you will partly experience a journey through today’s cultivated landscape, but you will also move from the Ice Age, to the period after the Ice Age, to historical and current mining and quarrying, industrialisation, the former coastline, and the dense urban space. With a symbol from the Ice Age moved into present time, you might acquire a different perspective of the landscape.

ALBERTSLUND - Tunnel valley

When the Ice Age came to an end, a tunnel valley remained. This gave us Store Vejleådal, which winds through an open meadow landscape with scattered vegetation and grazing cows. The open landscape allows the gaze to wander to the horizon, but the view ends in a faraway motorway, revealed by the subdued, but persistent, sound of the cars. The sculpture itself seems to be lying in the grass, as a fixed point from a geological time, and could appear to have been there since the ice melted away. The river valley was created by meltwater, that flowed in a tunnel under the ice.

HØJE-TAASTRUP - Sediments from the meltwater

Industrial heritage emerges in this place in Hedehusene – a history of exploitation of the resources in the earth, which has resulted from what is called “sediment sorting”. When the ice melted, the materials carried by the ice were sediments by the meltwater. The result of the ice’s work over millennia; stones, gravel and clay. Materials that have since been processed locally for e.g. tiles, concrete and stone wool. Wedged between the overflow reservoir and viaduct, the sculpture of concrete, the glacial erratic rock, depicts by virtue of the symbol, but also through its own material, the raw materials from the ice, which made industry possible in this area.

ISHØJ - Raised seabed

Ishøj lays soil at Store Vejleå’s mouth at Køge Bay. When the ice disappeared from Denmark, and later the rest of Scandinavia, the sea was 3 metres higher than it is now. This is revealed by shells from saltwater mussels and snails. Later on, the land rose by 3 metres – straightening out when the pressure from the ice was gone – and Ishøj reached its current height. In Kondiskoven forest, the sculpture is hidden between the young trees on the river bank. A small piece of forest with a rich bird and insect life, which offers a sense of nature (naturalness), yet is in stark contrast to the concrete-built sculpture. It plays on the perception that it could always have been there. The passing of time and changing landscapes cover the layers, and we may be in doubt as to what came first.

VALLENSBÆK - Landscaping

The little meadow here at Vallensbæk Harbour is an example of the 20th century’s view of nature and the creative forces of man. While suburbs developed, an understanding of the fact that the residents of the cities needed areas for recreation was also growing. Several areas around Copenhagen, including Strandparken in Køge Bay, were made available for recreational purposes. Before Strandparken was built (1975-1980), this area was coastline. The original coastline is now behind the beach and passes through the meadows and shallow lakes– in Vallensbæk, the coastline runs through the small meadow, roughly where the sculpture is now located. The coastline was formed 11,500 years ago by the ice, meltwater and sea. The new coastline is man-made and provides space for homes, a harbour and beach. Few people nowadays will give thought to the fact that, where the sculpture languishes in the grass, the waves in the bay once swirled over the sand. Køge Bay Strandpark has become today's nature.

HVIDOVRE - The dense urban space

A dense urban space dominated by infrastructure. It is often a network of roads that delineate the landscapes. At a traffic light controlled intersection, there is a small area with grass, and some trees framed by roads and pathways – an area left over from urban planning, where roads and buildings have grown in between each other. Here, the presence of a glacial erratic rock would be beyond our sense of order. It could have appeared during one of the countless excavations carried out in the urban space. First as a small stone, then as a giant. And would most definitely be in the way. It therefore seems both surprising, but also credible, that a sculpture in the form of a glacial erratic rock would be located here, where it references the infrastructural reality that today’s layers spread across the landscape. Here you can see how the suburb has emerged: an old road expanded over time, newer infrastructure, residential blocks and institutions, which gradually become wedged between the existing buildings, roads and facilities. Here, the sculpture becomes a tranquil axis, around which traffic travels and man-made buildings and facilities are created.

Dimensions: 250-400 cm x 300-500 cm x 200-250 cm

Materials: concrete, reinforcing steel, plastic, pigments

Supported by and realised in collaboration with VKIR - Vestegnens Kulturinvesteringsråd.

Technical assistance: Aquila Design

READ MORE ABOUT THE PROJECT HERE

Photos: Malthe Ivarsson

Video: Flammehav

EARTH'S SPEAKING TRUMPET

Performance talk with geologist Minik Rosing and artist Camilla Berner

2021

The performance talk took place on Wednesday 18 August at a mini-wetland area at Torbenfeldt Estate in Mørkøv. The conversation lasted approx. 1 hour.

What would the earth tell us if it had a voice?

In the open landscape, visual artist Camilla Berner and professor in geology Minik Rosing lead us closer to the voice of the earth in a conversational performance about the earth and the imprints that man has left and continues to leave on the earth. During the conversation, they worked together to form a speaking trumpet out of a lump of stamped clay soil.

Divergent voices and views of nature

In 2017 the government made a decision that a large number of mini-wetlands should be built to remedy the nitrogen situation in agriculture. SEGES subsequently took the initiative for a pilot project which was to let art meet these facilities in the agricultural landscape. It is on the basis of this that visual artist Camilla Berner has designed a work EARTH'S SPEAKING TRUMPET, an element of which is now performed at this performance talk.

EARTH'S SPEAKING TRUMPET is based on a view of nature, where mini-wetlands are considered something positive, which must alleviate the negative consequences of modern agriculture for the environment, and recreate a landscape from before industrialism's loss of 'the natural'. A ‘landscape paradise’ from before the industry's devastating fall, with increased biodiversity and diverse beauty.

However, the great narrative of the cultural landscape contains many complex, value-laden, symbol-bearing and also conflict-filled narratives. The cultural landscape is not 'natural', but a cultural phenomenon, and thus also a culture-bearing landscape, and the way of describing, perceiving and staging, for example, a mini-wetland is thus also meaningful and value-bearing.

EARTH'S SPEAKING TRUMPET wants to create awareness of the many divergent voices and views of nature that together create 'the great story' about the landscape.

A collaboration between SEGES, SOMEWHERE and Camilla Berner

Supported by Statens Kunstfond

Bringing In The Pollen From Lodgepole Pine

Group exhibition

Knowing Nature

Hanstholm Fyr

2021

The installation consists of 15 m2 of yellow pollen from the Lodgepole pine laid out on the floor. The pollen has been collected locally in Thy National Park. A little white figure is on display in a showcase, it is an enlarged pollen. Each of every little yellow pollen has the shape of this figure. At the end of the space a large photograph pictures the Lodgepole pine in its growing environment in the national park. The installation was shown in an old saving house that was typical along the coast of West Jutland in the 18-19th century.

The Lodgepole Pine was introduced in Thy in the late 1800s - early 1900s from Northern America. It was planned to protect the land from sand drifts, a result of overexploitation of the land and a problem for farmers in the area. Today sand drift is under control, but other problems have emerged – the Lodgepole pine has become an invasive species interrupting both local ecosystems and the type of landscape typical but also wanted for this area.

The Lodgepole pine produces a large amount of pollen. Pollen can survive in the earth up till 10.000 years. Through analyses of which pollen there is in the earth, we can get a very precise picture of the migration of plants over a long period of time. However, this also means that the pollen on the surface today will be tracible 10.000 years ahead of us.

In this case in the future mapping the migration of plants will probably be fragmented and chaotic as they have not moved by themselves over time but by humans. It will be a map a human activity rather than of natural circumstances leaving a blurry understanding of what nature is. The story of the Lodgepole pine also shows that we as humans act from another much more short-sighted time perspective, our own longevity. What seemed appropriate when we wanted to save ourselves and our livelihood from the sand-drifts, seemed like a great success back then. Today we save ourselves and the native species, but in fact we don’t know whether it is the eternal truth....

Longer text by Camilla Berner (ENG)

Vildspor podcast, radio4 (DK)

Materials:

Pollen carpet (Lodgepole Pine Pollen): 3 x 5 m Photo (Lodgepole Pine) 161 x 136, Barytha 325 g Figure (Enlarged pollen from Lodgepole Pine): 3D print, biodegradable plastic

Supported by STATENS KUNSTFOND

Group exhibition

Frejas Sal - Kultiverede landskaber og vilde haver

Skovhuset - kunst og natur

Værløse, Denmark

2021

A collection of plants from the nearest area around Skovhuset. The plants have been dried and pressed, and arranged in a herbarium. By each plant the name of the species is listed and where it is found. Every description is starting with a note of direction in relation to Skovhuset. Hence to where the viewer is standing and looking in the herbarium.

What is the point of view? The viewer is inside the institution viewing all the plants that are surrounding the very same institution; What is it that makes us able to see - do we see the diversity as it is in its natural setting, or do we need to be guided through a cultural mediation?

The work grows out of thoughts about our ability to observe, in the midst of sensing, seeing the world and knowing the names of the plants.

Materials:

Herbarium, table, lamp, gloves, three montres

The Undiscovered Garden

Den uopdagede have

2020-2021

The Undiscovered Garden is a commissioned art project developed in close collaboration with the Danish seed company Nykilde. The intention with the commission by Havekulturfonden is to have a new seed bag made, that will bring new light into garden culture in general.

The Undiscovered Garden investigates the existing but elusive and overlooked plants in private gardens as a material for composing the new seed bag.

For a year, Camilla Berner, together with a handful of Danish garden owners, let her own garden grow wild. Every month during one year the seasonal plants were collected in flower bouquets as a magnifying glass, and a witness of what was actually growing there. And as a method to inspire people to look extra carefully and discover what the garden is hiding. Together, Nykilde and Berner, selected a list of wild species based on these collections of existing plants from the participants’ gardens, which eventually made it into The Undiscovered Garden seed bag.

The seed bag serves as an offer to help other garden owners to recover their garden’s natural seed bank – and biodiversity – in case it is reduced or has completely disappeared. It comes in an exclusive, handmade box together with a little guide booklet and an empty seed bag encouraging you to continue spreading the wild garden to friends and neighbors.

All flower bouquets are distributed monthly on Instagram throughout 2021 accordingly to how they were collected in 2020. Follow the project on @denuopdagedehave and share your own discoveries in the wild garden under the hashtag #denuopdagedehave.

The seed bag incl. guide and catalogue can be purchased at Louisiana and Haveselskabet.

The seed bag contains 26 native wild plant species:

Bladder campion, Common selfheal, Silene dioica, Common mullein, Foxglove, Corn daisy, Goldenrod, Ox-eye daisy, Linseed (flax), Mallow, Corncockle, Brown knapweed, Hairy cat's-ear, Cornflower, Bird’s-foot trefoil, Ribwort plantain, Garlic mustard, Dark mullein, St John's wort, Tansy, Red clover, Red dead-nettle, Yarrow, Viper's bugloss, Soapwort, Wild carrot.

INDHOLD (DK): Blæresmælde, Brunelle, Dag-pragtstjerne, Filtbladet kongelys, Fingerbøl, Gul okseøje, Alm. gyldenris, Hvid okseøje, Alm. hør, Alm. katost, Klinte, Alm. knopurt, Alm. kongepen, Kornblomst, Kællingetand, Lancet-vejbred, Løgkarse, Mørk kongelys, Prikbladet perikon, Rejnfan, Rødkløver, Rød tvetand, Røllike, Slangehoved, Sæbeurt, Vild gulerod.

15 g seed + 15 g corn granules for easier hand sowing. Seeds for 10m2.

The box has laser-cut text on the front and is handmade from cardboard at the socio-economic company ‘Kartonnagefabrikken’ under the Hans Knudsen Institute.

The work is produced in an edition of 400.

Content:

Handmade cardboard box, 15,5 x 10,5 x 6,5 cm

Booklet, 16 pages, 9,5 x 14,5 cm, printed in 5+5 coulors (CMYK + Pantone)

Seed bag, 15 g seed + 15 g corn granules for easier hand sowing. The seed bag; Seeds from 26 native wild plant species for 10 m2. Sowing instructions and flowering schedule are included.

Empty seed bag for colleting and further spreading.

2019

Part of the group exhibition Den Frie Udstilling, Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen, 2020

The porcelain vase is made by the reknown Danish brand Bing and Grøndahl that excisted from 1853 to 1987. In the early and mid 20th century the products of Bing and Grøndahl became symbols of good taste and upper middle class wealth and was given a central position in the interior design of the home. The images used on the vases often depict a romanticized Nordic landscape painted with an Asian-inspired technique. Towards the late 20th century the vases was seen as kitsch and lost their former high status. They have lately regained some interest.

Camilla Berner used a selection of vases from Bing and Grøndahl in her work Plant Collection no 8-13 (2016). She had the vases shipped from Denmark to South Korea, and on the way back to Denmark most of the vases broke while being shipped. The work Recontruction #1 is a reconstruction or mending of the broken vase. At the same time the work takes interest in the broken landscape-imagery painted on the vase. It does so in a way that can be interpreted in a double understanding: The way our landscape and nature is "broken" due to the climate changes and the romanticization of an ideal nature that has suffered a fracture and may need a reconstruction.

Materials: porcelain, tape

Height: 34 cm

Owned by The Danish Arts Foundation

Solo exhibition

M100, Odense, Denmark

2020

Radical plants

Plant blindness, economy and Camilla Berner’s PLANT Museum

By Theis Vallø Madsen, ph.d.

Plants are slow and there are many of them. That gives plants long odds in the battle for attention in a society that celebrates speed and originality. Biologists talk of plants being in a blind spot in our culture. “Plant blindness”, as the phenomenon is called, is both culturally and evolutionarily psychological. Our brains must constantly sort through millions of sensory inputs, and it is therefore necessary to ignore useless and harmless things in our field of vision. Plants become background in the terrain, because they are neither dangerous nor a source of energy rich nourishment.

In modern times the battle for attention has become even more difficult. There is no real wilderness anymore, at least not in a totally cultivated land like Denmark. Here there are gardens, parks and farmland where plants become a part of the architecture. Forests are scarce and thoroughly regulated. It is modernity’s most fundamental division, namely the division of nature and culture that has made it possible to limit and control nature down to a single blade of grass. Nature has therefore become a place that is either weak or absent. It is out there, separate from us. In recent times our concept of nature as an outsider has been strengthened by the climate crisis and pandemics, both of which have been caused by people penetrating too far into nature’s exclusive places. However, plants continue growing, out of our sight! They can neither be limited nor controlled. They spread their seeds via insects and wind. They take root in every nook and cranny, and they do it in different ways and in varying tempos.

Camilla Berner, in many of her art projects, has worked here in the plant blind spot. She gathers and describes plants, and she moves them into museums, from their living places in weather-beaten and overseen areas of the inner city, apartment blocks, or, as here, in the backyard of an exhibition venue in Odense.

Such places – overgrown gardens – are used by the French philosopher Georges Bataille, as an example of an economics logic that precedes modern economic thought. Bataille writes that plants grow according to an economics logic that is based on surplus and sharing, and that stands in opposition to the market economy, which is based on restrictions and exchanges. Bataille uses the garden path as an example of a place where the gardener’s hoeing can only temporarily hold back the pressure of the surrounding plants. The path quickly becomes overgrown again, as long as the plants have access to natural resources - sun, water and soil – that don’t demand payment or something in exchange They grow until they can’t grow anymore.

The modern persons economy is based on limits, because only by setting limits can we set a price on a product. Limits make it possible to exchange one thing for another in a way that is not possible if it is free for the taking. Our consumer society and the artworld are based on limits, as seen clearly for example, in photography and limited-edition prints, where constructed limits increase the value of the single object. Plants grow wild, without consideration to our plans. They are part of an economy that strives fundamentally against economic rationalism. Plants give, whereas people exchange, according to Georges Bataille. His point is that plant economics preceded the exchange economy. Plants own places are not just a temporary break from modern life where we can find peace and mindfulness, plants grow wild and with a logic that is radically different from the exchange logic we have become used to thinking into all aspects of our lives.

Camilla Berner uses museum tactics to force us to see plants in a new way, namely, with the help of the museums’ methods of classifying, describing and highlighting the particular characteristics of a plant.

The artist’s small, budding museums, such as PLANT Museum, show that it isn’t necessary to go further than our own backyard to see something that is wildly radical, yet completely ordinary.

Materials and dimensions:

15 montres in mahogany: 78 x 60 x 7 cm

15 panels of herbarium

52 species of plants

Paper, needles, light

Diorama: 227 x 210 x 100 cm

Cardboard, textile, wood

Further reading:

Radikale planter af Theis Vallø Madsen, Ph.d. (DK)

Idoart.dk (DK)

Public art project

Hørdum, Thy, Denmark

Part of the project KulTHYvator

Realized 2019

The site-specific work consists of a ball made from old bricks, a bench, a pathway and trees, bushes and other plants in a garden where there used to be a butcher’s shop. The work was created for an urban renewal project in Thy, Denmark, specifically for the small town Hørdum. The project - KulTHYvator - was initiated in 2018 in a collaboration between Thisted municipality and the villages Snedsted, Sjørring and Hundborg and artist Thomas Wolsing. The idea of the project is to remove empty, old houses and create new, recreational spaces for the villagers – spaces where art, landscape and history are tied together.

Camilla Berner’s project Træ. Samling. Kugle focuses on transformation. It is inspired by the history of Hørdum: the town used to be a centre for trading while today almost all shops are closed, people mostly move away, and the houses are hard to sell. Berner wanted to transform this negative development of the town. She was also inspired by the tradition of wise men in the town; an ability to heal is passed from father to son through generations. Her work explores both physical and mental transformation and the way they are connected.

The specific site for the work was a red brick house built in 1907 as a butcher’s shop and the garden. The house was torn down, but Camilla Berner kept the garden; the trees and bushes, the lawn and the flower beds. She wanted to preserve parts of the existing and transform it into something new. The bricks were also kept. They were cleaned and turned into a transformation ball or a “crystal ball” – inspired by the wise men of the town. The old terrazzo floor was used to build a pathway leading from the road to the ball. A bench was built around a big, old beech tree in the garden. The beech and the other trees, bushes and plants of the garden can be seen as reminders of the past – we bring history with us into the transformation.

6th graders from the Koldby school created an “arboretum” together with the citizens of Hørdum. An “arboretum” is a collection of trees, and also a collection of stories. The children interviewed people in the town about the past and asked them to choose a tree or a bush, that the children then planted where the house used to be. The interviews were printed and put into the ground beneath the trees and bushes. In time the site of the house will transform into a piece of nature containing the history of the town.

Materials:
Recycled bricks and terrazzo floor from the house, concrete, wood, beech tree, 8 different tree species and bushes, glass bottles, paper, existing village garden

Stående pige med blomst (eft. Noack)

Performance talk no. 1-3

Participants: Torsten Bøgh Thomsen, Rasmus Ejrnæs og Ida Bencke

Astrid Noacks Atelier, Copenhagen 

August & november 2019

In line with two previous projects (here and here) that Camilla Berner made in Astrid Noacks Atelier, she based this project on the work of Astrid Noack herself, more specifically her bronze sculpture Standing Girl with Flower (1933); a young girl standing with one foot in front of the other holding a small flower in her left hand, close to the heart.

The project consisted of three performance talks held in the old atelier. The intention was to initiate interdisciplinary conversations about the relationship between human and nature and the role of art in relation to nature and today’s climate crisis. The focus of the first talk was views on nature - how nature has been understood differently through history and how different views on nature are expressed in art. To talk about this, the literary scholar Torsten Bøgh Thomsen was invited. For the second performance talk that focused on biodiversity and our need to control nature, biologist and senior researcher Rasmus Ejrnæs was invited. The focus of the third performance talk was the relation between nature and women and to talk about this, Ida Bencke from the Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology was invited.

During each talk, Camilla Berner and the participant sculpted a copy of Noack’s Standing Girl with Flower in clay. The artistic and physical action influenced the talks, drawing the attention and conversation towards the concrete material, the clay, and the sculpting technique. The work of the hands influenced the work of the mind, creating different conversations and modes of concentration.

Each performance talk was video documented in full length and will be available here.

Height of clay sculptures: ca. 63 cm
Materials: wood, steel, clay

Project manager: Helene Johanne Christensen

Videos:
Performance talk no. 1: Lasse Mouritzen
Performance talks no 2-3: André Hansen

Supported by:
Rådet for Visuel Kunst (Københavns Billedkunstudvalg)
Nørrebro Lokaludvalg

Public art project

Bellinge Fælled. Builder: Odense Kommune

Realized 2015-19

Bellinge BALL is a site-specific public artwork that Camilla Berner created for a newly build neighborhood in Bellinge Fælled, Odense. The work consists of a big sphere cast in concrete from a hole that was dug in the ground and 14 smaller and lighter colored half circles cast with the same method. The big sphere is created from two halves that are put together and placed on the ground. The surface of the concrete sphere is rough from being casted directly from the soil.

The work is inspired by the long history of the area, by the name Bellinge, that probably derives from the word ‘ball’, and by the ambition of the new neighborhood to be sustainable. 

Before they began building at the site, archaeological excavations were made. The excavations showed that there had been settlements in the area for thousands of years. Traces of life were found dating all the way back to the Stone age and Bronze age. Seeds and traces of crops such as wheat and barley were found in the soil, together with remnants of big holes dug into the ground. Holes like these are well known from the early Stone age and were dug to extract building materials such as clay from the soil or to create waterholes. When the hole had served its purpose, it was often used for kitchen waste. The name Bellinge presumably originates from the old Danish word ‘ball’ that means sphere or ball, and the name is thought to refer to a typographic hill formation in the landscape.

Sphere: Diameter 200 cm

14 half circles: Diameter 50 and 30 cm

Material: concrete (ground cast)

Flora. Group exhibition. Randers Kunstmuseum. Denmark.

2020

and

Flora. Group exhibition. Stavanger Art Museum. Norway

2019

Camilla Berner’s project The Exotic Becomes Ordinary and the Ordinary Exotic consists of two works first exhibited at the group exhibition Flora at Stavanger Art Museum in Norway and then at Randers Kunstmuseum, Denmark. Drawing on inspiration from the Norwegian weaving artist Frida Hansen (1855–1931) and her interest in exotic plants, Camilla Berner created one work to be exhibited inside the museum and one work for the museum garden.

Frida Hansen’s work is central to the collection of Stavanger Art Museum. Besides weaving, Frida Hansen created a garden with imported exotic plants and animals close to her family home. Many motifs in her textile works seem to be inspired by this garden. She colored the yarn she used in her weaving with plant dye from both local and exotic plants.

During the 1800s plants were being exchanged across the continents and introduced to private gardens as ornamental plants. In the 1840s Dr. Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward invented a small greenhouse, a Wardian case, to keep the plants safe during the long voyages on sea. Some of the plant species that were introduced during the 1800s and the 1900s have since found their way into the local nature, and some of them thrive so well that they have become invasive. Today, exotic plants can be bought everywhere; the colorful and beautiful plants are being sold at florists and in supermarkets.

The two works explore our view on nature by questioning our ideas of what is natural and authentic and what is not, and if it matters. Camilla Berner focuses on the way we relate to the exotic; the fascination of the unknown and strange, the desire to own it, and the transformation of the exotic into normal to a degree where we no longer know what is original and what has been imported.

The work outside the museum is a sculptural installation; a greenhouse inspired by the Wardian case. The greenhouse is constructed from iron bars and is painted gold. Invasive plant species found in the area of Mosvatnet Park are planted inside the construction. The gold underlines the plants’ transformation from desired exotic ornamental plants to unwanted vegetation. A sign next to the greenhouse shows a map of the world with information about the origin and year of import of the plants.

The work inside the museum consists of a transportation rack normally used in plant markets. Golden wool thread dyed with colors from the invasive plant species planted in the Wardian case outside the museum is wrapped around the rack, and the shelfs of the rack are filled with exotic plant species, that we recognize from super markets and plant markets.

Greenhouse: 220 x 175 x 105 cm

Transportation rack (incl. plants): 50 x 80 x 250 cm

Materials: metal, gold paint, (invasive) plants (from Mosvatnet Park), sign, transportation rack, wool (plant-dyed)

Retrospective exhibition, Vejen Kunstmuseum

2018

Retrospective exhibition showing selected works, amongst others The Brown Coal Adventure, Composting Units (Secret Garden) and Unnoticed News. 

As part of the exhibition, 24 works were shown in 24 display cases, being the traditional Christmas Calendar at Vejen Kunstmuseum of 2017. Each day from December 1st untill the 24th, one work was revealed.

Photos: Pernille Klemp

FURTHER READING:

Katalog DK

Vejen Kunstmuseum (all 24 works)

Jyllandsposten

Plant Collection no. 14-21

Brunkulseventyret. Planteindsamling nr. 14-21.

Moving Plants / Planter i bevægelse. Curated by Line Marie Thorsen. Rønnebæksholm

2017

For the group show Moving Plants in Rønnebæksholm Berner contributed with 8 photographs of bouquets of plants collected in a former brown coal mining area in Søby, Denmark.

The brown coal was extracted from the ground in Søby during the period 1940-1970 and was used to produce of electricity. The impact of the coal mining in the area resulted in huge changes to the landscape.

Berner arranged plants collected from the area in bouquets and presented them in two historical silver cups. The bouquets were placed and photographed in the locations of the old mining area where the plants were collected.

The cups Berner used as vases were originally given as rewards to farmers for cultivating the barren heathland in Søby, where the coal mining later took place. The cups were two of 900 cups given to farmers in the period 1804-1969, the period where most of Denmark’s land got cultivated.

Along with each photograph a text and a list of species was shown. The texts describe the historical development and the changes that has occurred in the areas where the flowers for the bouquets were collected and photographed.

By arranging the collected wild plants of the old mining area in the silver cups and photographing the bouquets on site in the abandoned and now overgrown landscape, Berner examines the natural regeneration of nature in places where people interfered with a landscape and thereafter stopped controlling the vegetation.

Photos: 69 x 103 cm, Hahnemühle Fine Art Barytha, 325 g
Texts: 19 x 23 cm, print, drawing paper, 120 g
Edition: 5 (+2 AP)

FURTHER READING

Catalogue ENG

Katalog DK

Brunkulseventyret folder

Rønnebæksholm

Kunsten.nu

Elletræ genspejlet

Tandplejen, L.A. Rings Vej, Aarhus

2017

Site-specific work for the school dentist on L.A. Rings Vej in Aarhus, Denmark.

The painting Elletrunter (1893) by the Danish painter L.A. Ring, whom the street is named after, was the source of inspiration for this work. In the painting by Ring alder trees are reflected in a forest lake. Berner created a sculptural paraphrase of the painting by carefully casting alder tree trunks in concrete. The tree trunks were split in half and the bottoms put together to create a reflection similar to the one the lake creates.

The work is not a 1:1 translation of the painting, but a paraphrase raising questions about our view on nature. By materializing and immortalizing organic and impermanent objects like trees in an ’urban’ material like concrete, contrasts emerge showing us the complexity of our distinction of nature and culture. The concrete of the pavement and the sculpture are  made from organic materials: sand, stone and water, so where does nature begin and end? What is natural? Where is nature? Are the tamed trees along the city road nature?

Dimensions: ca. 250 x 100 x 75 (40) cm and 100 x 20 x 40 cm

FURTHER READING:

Elletræ Genspejlet

Kunsten.nu

Statens Værksteder for Kunst

Still Alive, Factory Gallery, Seoul, South Korea

2016

In the exhibition a photography of a Korean flower arrangement, a hwa-hwan, is shown. The artist herself and her helper are standing on each side of it. According to Korean tradition, a "hwa-hwan" is used for celebration. The flower bouquet consists of many different colourst at occasions like weddings, birthdays or other celebrated special events. At funerals, the same arrangement is made from white flowers only. In the exhibited photography the hwa-hwan is colourful, but it differs from the traditional Korean version as it is not made from the ordinary bouquets flowers like roses, lilies etc., but from wild flowers, weeds and grasses.

The arrangement was made and documented immediatedly outside. It is leaning against a wall with graffiti and is rather informally displayed on a Euro-pallet with grass growing high around it. Considering that the context is a wasteland site, one senses that it is not an ordinary celebration of a person or an event. Rather the artist makes a celebration of a place and something of a more general significance.

The hwa-hwan is made from flowers collected in the wasteland site where it is photographed. It is a site that used to be in the periphery of Copenhagen but through urban development it is now getting closer still to being a central location of the city. The last building at the site was torn down in 2002. It was an old factory but towards the end it hosted a collective of artist studios, which the artist herself was part of. The plan was to build apartment blocks immediately after 2002 but this didn't happen as the site proved to be severely polluted.

The hwa-hwan arrangement is a mapping of how the plant species re-establish themselves, and is at the same time a witness of nature's empowerment and taking over the place. The bouquet becomes a celebration of nature's ability to regenerate. But the arrangement seems also to suggest some questions: what do we see when we see a polluted site? Is it possible to see beyond the pollution? Or more generally; how do we change our view, so that we can see something else? What does it look like from the point of view of the self-organising nature? By imposing the still life iconic imagery on wild life plants, Berner questions our knowledge and the position of the "wild" in our culture.

In Berner's artistic research in Seoul she investigated similar wasteland sites throughout the city. This has given her the insights needed to produce the site-specific work presented in the gallery. The approach is similar to the Copenhagen project; to find out what will the South Korean wild nature, weeds and other overseen vegetation, reveal in the urban setting of Seoul. Her finds were arranged in old Danish porcelain vases - made by the famous Danish porcelain maker: Royal Copenhagen. A type of vases favoured by the Danish bourgeoisie up through the 20th century. Several of the vases depict a Danish landscape with a romanticized ideal character to it. The bouquet arrangements will in this context work as mappings and a registration of specific sites and hence let the eye of a cultural point of view blend with the concrete collecting of plants.

In the exhibition all arrangements are on display as photo documentations supplied with a list of species. On the floor is a shipping box displaying the Royal Copenhagen vases used in Seoul.

Photo no. 8
164 x 146 cm, Canson Infinity Platine Fiber Rag 310 g - satin
Photos no. 9-13
93 x 123 cm, Canson Infinity Platine Fiber Rag 310 g - satin
Texts: 20 x 39 cm
Edition: 5 (+2 AP)

FURTHER READING

List of Species

Den Frie Udstilling, Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Østerbro, Copenhagen.

2016

A site-specific work telling the story of the area surrounding Den Frie Udstillingsbygning through the collection and presentation of the different species of plants growing in the area at a specific time of year, with a focus on weeds and their free mobility.

The work combines a scientific-like registration of the species and a poetical diary-like description of each of the plants collected.

Berner collected the plants and wrote down notes concerning the characteristics of the specific species, their context and her own personal, poetical and intuitive thoughts and reflections in relation to the plants.

The Danish title of the work refers both to the traditional herbarium; the collection of dried plants used in botany and taxonomy, and to the freedom of the weeds, how they travel with the birds and the wind. The free life of the weeds is used as a reference to the name of the exhibition space; ’Den Frie Udstilling’ meaning ‘The Free Exhibition’. In this way the freedom of art and the freedom of the weeds are connected.

Dimensions: 122 x 122 x 21 cm
Materials: MDF, plant material

FURTHER READING

Kunsten.nu
Den Frie

Ung mand planter et træ (eft. Noack)

Copenhagen Art Week. Astrid Noacks Atelier

2016

For Copenhagen Art Week Berner made a performance with inspiration from the sculpture Young man planting a tree by the Danish artist Astrid Noack (1888-1954). Berner put out an ad asking for an ”owner” of a tree she wanted to plant in a former building site in the Nørrebro area in Copenhagen as part of the performance. A young man replied and agreed to take responsibility for the tree. For the performance Berner made a costume with inspiration from Noack’s sculpture – one piece for each body part. The people that took part in the performance each wore a part of the costume. They walked in a procession to the building site and made a ritual planting of the tree. The performance raises questions about our relationship to urban nature. What happens if the local people get more involved in the caretaking of the plants and trees in their neighbourhood? What can the sense of ownership bring about?

Materials: Fabric, tree, spade, watering can

A Landmark. Group show at Skovlunde Flyveplads. Curated by Hartmut Stockter.

2016

For the group show A Landmark in the former airfield in Skovlunde, Denmark, Berner put up a golden fence in the exact shape, but in a miniature version, of the airfield fence as it were in the 1970s. Berner’s fence will remain in the meadow for a period of 5 years, during which the vegetation inside the fence will grow wild, while the surrounding vegetation will be cut once or twice a year as usual. Instead of inviting people into the fenced garden, the fence is keeping them out in favour of the plants. Over time it turns out whether there will be a difference in the amount of plant species inside the fenced garden compared to the amount outside it in the meadows.

Dimensions: ca. 210 x 450 x 376 cm
Materials: pre-fabricated fence, gold paint

Vandrende buket

Skulpturlandsbyen Selde. Curated by Marianne Jørgensen.

2015

What is the significance of giving someone a bouquet of flowers?

As part of the art project Skulpturlandsbyen Selde (The Sculpture Village Selde) Berner invited local residents of the small town of Selde to participate in collecting bouquets of flowers and giving them to their neighbours. The result was 68 bouquets traveling from participant to participant. A bouquet of flowers is usually something you give to someone you care for. With the work Berner emphasized the importance of relationships in small communities.

A list of species for each bouquet was made and the bouquets were documented in photographs made by the local participants. The photographs were presented on postcards in the local grocery shop. With the help of a local woman Berner kept track of the bouquets in a logbook in which people wrote the stories of the collected flowers and whom they were given to. 

Traveling Bouquet has both a scientific perspective, that focuses on the registration and collection of the plant species, and an anthropologic perspective concerning the gesture of giving someone a bouquet of flowers. The work deals with themes as friendship, relationships, communication, community in small towns and our interpretation of specific plants, places and social gestures.

Materials: cardboard, metal
Postcards (69): 15 x 10 cm
Postcard stander: 180 cm

 FURTHER READING

Kunsten.nu

Stående kvinde (eft. Noack)

Site-specific performance work at Astrid Noacks Atelier

2014

A paraphrase of a photograph of the Danish artist Astrid Noack (1888-1954) and Noack’s sculpture Standing Woman made in 1937-41. The work was created during a 24-hour performance.

In the old atelier of Astrid Noack Berner set up a 3D-printer and printed three biodegradable plastic sculptures depicting herself as Noacks colleague while holding a bouquet of flowers close to her chest and talking to a young boy, probably the one who gave her the flowers. The sculptures were exhibited along with materials from failed printing attempts.

The work is a paraphrase of both a photograph of the Astrid Noack herself and Noack’s sculpture Standing Woman made in 1937-41, that has been admitted to the Danish Culture Canon in 2006.

The original photograph shows Astrid Noack in a situation of giving and receiving and Berner had her picture taken in the atelier performing a similar situation. The paraphrase is not far from being a self-portrait, but it reaches further by thematizing the role of the artist, the premises of creating a work and the authenticity of art in both Noack’s time and today. 

The 3D-printed sculptures were exhibited along with materials from failed printing attempts in Astrid Noacks Atelier together with the documentation of the creative process before and during the performance.

Dimensions: 15 cm
Materials: two figures in respectively stone- and plastic materials, various proces materials, 3D printer, wood, photo

Krinsen, Kongens Nytorv

Bring naturen ind. Faaborg Museum. 2014/2015

and

Synliggørelser. Den Frie. 2020

Plant Collection no. 1-7 was created in relation to Berner’s work Unnoticed News, that was based on Berners registration and collection of plants in the historical formal garden of Krinsen, placed in Kgs. Nytorv, Copenhagen. Unnoticed News took place in 2014 where Krinsen was closed off and made inaccessible for the public and left to its own  due to the construction of a new metro line opening in 2019. Berner gained access to the closed garden of Krinsen after 1 ½ years of negotiations and got a permission to create an art project behind the fences.

The project included the study of the biodiversity of the area growing wild and was planned to last several years. However, the project ended abruptly in 2015 due to the gardens heritage conservation, and Berner created bouquets out of the wild growing plants before they were cut down. The bouquets were photographed and a complete list of the species in each bouquet was added. The photographs were exhibited at the 100th anniversary exhibition Bring naturen ind (Bring nature inside) at Faaborg Museum, Denmark. 

Plant Collection no. 1-7 examines the conflict that took place between the neighbours of Krinsen and the Copenhagen Municipality; the conflict between the wish for an organized garden and the wish for allowing wild nature in an urban landscape. In this work, as in her other plant collections, Berner is questioning the way we perceive nature and our need for controlling it. How and why do we decide that some plants are unwanted? And where does the need of control come from?

123 x 88 cm, Fine Art Barytha, 325 g, print
Edition: 5 (+2 AP)

FUTHER READING

Faaborg Museum

Havnehaven

Holbæk i Pinsen, Holbæk Havn. Curated by Nikolaj Danielsen.

2015

A garden created during three days of workshops in collaboration with people from three different neighborhoods in Holbæk, Denmark. The festival Holbæk I Pinsen initiated the project and Camilla Berner guided and inspired the participants.

One idea with the garden was to give people from different communities a chance to get to know each other. Another was that the garden could contribute to the ongoing transformation of the harbour in a way that involved the residents in the area. Last but not least, the project was an investigation of the concept of beautification and gardens in public spaces as such: Can a garden create a new “code” for a specific place?

Three workshops were held. The first consisted of a shared dinner. The participants ate the food decorations on the tables and discussed the concept ‘garden’ and the location of the new garden. In the second workshop the design of the garden was discussed, including a discussion about which plants should be planted. During the third workshop the garden was created.

The participants got to chose one or two plants themselves, others were donated by the residents of Holbæk. The plants were planted along with seeds of summer flowers that were spread out. Everything grew side by side with self-sown weeds. Subsequently the participants tended the garden themselves. The garden was created in the foundation tracks of a torn down Silvan-building at the harbour. In that way the existing situation of the specific site determined the shape of the garden.

Dimensions: ca. 400 m2
Materials: wide selection of ornamental and edible plants, herbs, trees, bushes, perennial plants

Secret Garden III, Gl. Holtegaard

2014

The performance was part of Berner’s contribution to the group show Secret Garden III in the baroque garden of Gl. Holtegaard.

A gardener walks around in the baroque garden of Gl. Holtegaard wearing gloves, a straw hat and an apron. He is hatching chickweed and placing it in transparent compost containers symmetrically located in the parterre. When the work is done, the gardener takes of the hat and the apron and puts it in a display box along with his gardening tools. 

A wild meadow in the otherwise very organized garden of Gl. Holtegaard was the starting point for Berner’s work. The wild meadow seems to represent the untamed nature, especially in comparison to the well-organized and controlled landscape of the baroque garden, but the meadow actually requires just as much, if not even more, maintenance as the tamed and geometrically cut parterre. 

 The transparent boxes were containers for garden waste, but at the same time they functioned as display cases, where the unwanted garden waste, the weed, was exhibited. The decomposition of the organic material was on display, as well as the process of hatching, of taming and controlling the seemingly wild meadow.

The work questions our distinction and understanding of what is wild and what is tamed nature, pointing towards the cultural construction of our view on nature.

Dimensions:
Compost bins: an average of 90 x 70 x 70 cm
Montre: 40 x 40 x 40 cm
Materials: Acrylics, apron, leather, reed hat, gardening gloves

FURTHER READING

Kunsten.nu

Kopenhagen

Oversete nyheder. Krinsen. Kgs. Nytorv

Urban Nature / Byens Natur. Museum of Copenhagen

2014

A project documenting the formal garden of Krinsen in Kgs. Nytorv, Copenhagen, growing into a wilderness of mixed wild and left cultural plants, hidden from the public behind construction site security fences. The project lasted over two months and was published and displayed as a "street newspaper" at three locations; Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Museum of Copenhagen and on Kgs. Nytorv itself, right next to the closed construction site hiding the garden. The newspaper was published in three copies during eight weeks in an edition of five (A2).

Kgs. Nytorv is a central square in the heart of the old Copenhagen with several prestigious buildings surrounding it housing amongst others The Royal Theatre, The Royal Academy of Fine Art, The French Embassy and the luxurious hotel D'Angleterre. With the equestrian statue of King Christian the 5th in the centre, the square is of great national pride to many Danish people and it is therefore not any kind of garden growing wild. Hence the project documents not only the growing process, but also the reactions on this. 

The project was realized in collaboration with Copenhagen Museum as part of the exhibition Urban Nature / Byens Natur.

3 x 5 montres in mahogany: 78 x 60 x 7 cm
In Museum of Copenhagen and at Kgs. Nytorv mounted on pentagonal columns, ca. 220 x 250 cm, plywood

Listen to an Interview about the project (in Danish only). Broadcast on national radio, DR channel P1 "Natursyn".

Find the podcast here:

Natursyn P1

Underjordiske studier

Public commission, Kolding Municipality, Denmark

2012-2014

A sub-earth unit with windows enabling children to study the roots of a garden. An art work for a playground at Vonsild Specialcenter, a care center for children with special needs and other disabilities.

One of the things that the children at Vonsild Specialcenter are often challenged by, is a poor spatial awareness and a lack of spatial perception towards their body. Therefore, these children often face a hard time climbing even a smaller hill, not to mention moving through a confined space. The ability to write is also connected to one's spatial awareness and understanding and hence often a challenge too. To meet these challenges, Berner made it possible for the children to overcome the hill by going straight through the hill instead. By going underground the children will meet sub-earth darkness, humidity, beetles, roots etc. and also psychologically meet and hopefully overcome the challenge of the confined space awakening the senses.

Above the sub-earth unit is a garden of plants with particularly deep and strong root systems. The garden is inspired by a submarine and is equipped with a periscope. The children can study the roots of the plants in one of the six windows installed in the main body of the sub-earth unit.

The project wants to strengthen a spatial awareness and awaken a curiosity towards the relationship between what we see above and what we find beneath the ground.

The garden consists of following plants: Phragmites australis (Tagrør), Myrrhis odorata (Spansk Kørvel), Panicum virgatum (Prærie Hirse), Liatris spicata (Langakset Pragtskær), Alnus glutinosa (Rødel), Borago officinalis (Hjulkrone), Bistorta officinalis (Slangeurt), Triticum aestivum (Hvede), Cichorium intybus (Alm. Cikorie), Salix purpurea (Purpurpil).

Dimensions: 17, 5 m, middle tube Ø140 cm, hill height ca. 4 m, periscope 110 cm about earth level
Materials: PE plastic, glass, mirror, staircase with trees and plants with particularly strong and deep root growth.

A new permanent grove in the park of the estate Glorup in Funen, Denmark.

2013

A letter from the Danish writer Karen Blixen found in a drawer in Glorup manor in Funen, Denmark and a number of important people from Camilla Berner’s personal and professional universe was the starting point of her contribution to the park of Geist Glorup.

Tree Tales is a newly planted grove of selected trees in the middle of Glorup’s exotic garden whichexamines the identity and history of people and places. Like a great part of Berner’s other work Tree Tales is site-specific and deals with the impact of artists and cultural celebrities on the history of Glorup during their stays in the place.

The writer Karen Blixen visited the manor and asked for a tree from Glorup. She got a lime tree which she plantedin her own grove in Rungstedlund along with a sealed container containing a note explaining the choice of the tree species andplaced next to the roots. Following Blixen, Berner asked a number of inspirational people to choose a favourite tree and bring it to Glorup. On the basis of her own personal life course, she appointed people who have had a decisive influence on the development towards her current artistic practice. Glorup's current landlord, Jakob Rosenkrantz, also contributed to the work by appointing people who are important to him and especially to the development of the manor today, asking these people to choose a tree for the new grove. The grove presents an unusual and a slightly odd mix of tree species bearing witness of the many stories that lie behind.

Similar to the act of Blixen, sealed containers with texts explaining the choice of the inspirational people and their motivations for choosing the specific tree were laid by the roots of the trees. In that way Tree Tales contributes with new – hidden – personal stories to the rest of the storytelling in the romantic garden of Glorup. Some of Tree Tales' trees were planted at a ceremony during the opening of the exhibition 'Geist Glorup' where the involved people read their reasons for choosing the specific people and trees.

Original text in Danish by Line Kjær and Lotte Boesen Toftgaard. Translated by Helene Johanne Christensen

Exhibition 'Geist Glorup' curated by UMAGE  / Line Kjær and Lotte Boesen Toftgaard.

Materials: Seven trees, porcelain signs, bottles, paper and booklet

FURTHER READING:

Geist Glorup

Danish text from the exhibition guide:

Et brev fra Karen Blixen, fundet i en kommodeskuffe i havestuen på Glorup, samt en række betydningsfulde personer fra kunstnerens personlige og faglige univers danner udgangspunkt for Camilla Berners bidrag til Geist Glorup. Tree Tales, en nyplantet lund af særligt udvalgte træer midt i Glorups eksothave, er en undersøgelse af, hvad der giver steder og mennesker identitet og historie. Tree Tales, der ligesom størstedelen af Berners projekter er et stedsspecifikt værk, tematiserer hvorledes kunstnere og kulturpersonligheder gennem tiden har påvirket Glorups historie på deres kortere og længere ophold på stedet. Karen Blixen besøgte bl.a. herregården og bad efterfølgende Glorup om et træ, som hun plantede ud i herregårdslunden på Rungstedlund sammen med en lille note om valget af træsort i en forseglet beholder. I forlængelse af Blixens handling har Berner bedt en række inspiratorer om at udvælge et yndlingstræ og bringe det til Glorup. Med afsæt i kunstnerens eget personlige livsforløb har hun udpeget personer, der har haft afgørende betydning for udviklingen hen imod hendes nuværende kunstneriske praksis. Glorups nuværende godsejer, Jakob Rosenkrantz, har ligeledes bidraget til værket ved at vælge de personer, der har betydning for ham og særligt godsets udvikling i dag, og bedt disse mennesker om at udvælge et træ til den nye lund. Tilsammen udgør lunden en usædvanlig og lidt sær sammensætning af træsorter, der vidner om de mange historier, der ligger bag. I lighed med Blixen lægges der ved træernes rødder en forseglet beholder med en skrivelse, hvori Berner og Rosenkrantz gør rede for valget af inspiratorer, samt disses motivation for at vælge det pågældende træ. Tree Tales bidrager således med en række nye - skjulte - personfortællinger til rækken af historiefortællende spor i Glorups romantiske have.

Enkelte af Tree Tales’ træer bliver plantet ved en ceremoni under åbningen af Geist Glorup d. 25/5, hvor de involverede oplæser deres begrundelser for valg af personer og træer.

En tilhørende publikation formidler desuden historierne bag Tree Tales.

Commissioned work for the conference room Montanasalen at Gl. Strand Art Gallery, Copenhagen.

2012

In the American story Little Shop of Horrors (1935) the main character is a flower shop assistant, who struggles to keep one specific plant alive that he believes will help him fulfil his dreams.. The plant, a carnivorous plant he names Audrey, feeds on human blood and grows flowers with the faces of the people it has overpowered and eaten. Gradually things get out of control; the plant takes power and becomes a monster as a result of the flower shop assistant going too far in the attempt to achieve his own ends.

Inspired by the story and drawing on her fascination with carnivorous plants and the visually evocative effect they have on people, Berner created the site-specific work Little Shop of Horror for the conference room, Montanasalen, at Kunstforeningen Gl. Strand, Copenhagen. The starting point of the work was an imagined scenario: During a conference, different power relations are at play.What if the relationships were switched around, so that it suddenly was the office plants that set the agenda? What if the plants took power?

Along one wall glass windows were set up to distort the perspective of the room. The opposite wall was transformed into a wall of plants growing out through empty window frames. The plant wall was made in collaboration with Deichmann Planter. stood a carnivorous plant named Audrey II stood in one of the windowsills.

After the exhibition the work became part of the office landscape at Den Obelske Familiefond. In 2018 the work was taken down.

Dimensions: wall panels 336 x 500 cm
Materials: wood, glass and growing plants

Belongs to Den Obelske Familiefond

FURTHER READING:

Gl. Strand

Realized for the art festival Survival Kit 4. Riga, Latvia.

Curated by Sovita Krese, Latvian Center of Contemporary Art. 

2012

The Riga Gardens is a small garden created out of existing vegetation, plant donations from local people and other materials found in the abandoned factory, that was the venue of the festival “Survival Kit 4”.

In exchange of the plant, the donator was given seeds of ‘White Sweetclover’ from   Berner's ‘Black Box Garden’ in DK. In the garden of The Riga Gardens the donated plants were accompanied by photographs that pictured the exchange of plant and seeds.

The project thematize the stories plants carry and their mobility. The project also highlighted the value of abandoned spaces and made the value that plants can bring to an otherwise overlooked space visible.

Materials: Mixed media

Copenhagen Art Festival. Østre Anlæg, Copenhagen.

2012

Performance event in the public park 'Østre Anlæg' in central Copenhagen, Denmark.

Seven lawn mowers made available to the public free to use in a collective act of lawn mowing.

Cut the Grass is an elaboration of some of the experiences made during the Black Box Garden project concerning the role and (in)visibility of the gardener in public spaces and green areas in the city. What is the value of public spaces if they are always regulated by prohibitions? How does that affect our relationship to the environments we are part of? What would happen if we were allowed to take ownership of the public spaces in our cities? If we were able to participate more in the maintenance of the public green areas?

Local people were invited to take up the role of gardeners with seven lawn mowers made available free to use. The event enabled people to participate in the maintenance of a green area in the city. During the event people interacted with each other and with a public area, a city park, and took part of a community-forming action. Citizens got the opportunity to actively influence their environment, to take part in the maintenance of a public space. A responsibility otherwise resting in the hands of a remote authority were given to ordinary citizens in the collective act of mowing lawns.

Duration of event: 2 hours
Materials: Seven lawn movers and gloves

Cultivation Field. Reading, UK.

2012

In continuation of her earlier work dealing with seed banks Camilla Berner produced a limited-edition foil packet of the “Black Box Garden Seed Collection” in collaboration with one of the world’s biggest seed companies, Sutton Seeds in England. The packet contains the 92 seed species that Berner collected and registered in 2011 at the wasteland site of her project Black Box Garden in Copenhagen.

One of the seed packets Sutton Seeds offer is called “Wild Flower Seed Collection”. Berner was interested in examining the images and feelings that we connect with the notion of “wild flowers” and the relationship between the “wild” and the commercialization of seeds. She wanted to play with the idea that the wasteland site and the wild flowers growing there was already commercialized, bringing up questions about our cultural understanding of nature and its relation to commercial aspects in society. What seeds are selected for a packet of “wild flowers” and what does the selection tell us about our understanding of the “wild”?

Black Box Garden Seed Collection was shown at the exhibition Cultivation Field, curated by Kate Corder in Reading, UK, where the seed company Suttons Seeds was founded in 1806.

LIST OF SPECIES · 92 species registered at Krøyer Plads, April – Nov. 2011, © Camilla Berner

Dimensions: 13,2 x 19 cm, multi color print on paper, seeds in special tin bags from Sutton Seeds

Photos: Tue Schioerring

Made for the contemporary art festival VISIT Tingbjerg. 

2012

Tingbjerg is a suburban area near Copenhagen that is often associated with social challenges and violence. Camilla Berner wanted to escape these prejudices and create a project that would address all of the people living in the neighborhood, not just one particular group or one specific problem. 

Through systematic registration and collection of the vegetation, weeds, perennials, bushes and trees growing in Tingbjerg, Camilla Berner got to know the area and the people living there. She used the method of the botanist, the mapping of plants, as a way to map the social ecology of the area and as a way of highlighting a different and beautiful side of Tingbjerg.

The catalogue of the local vegetation showed a lot of non-native plants reflecting the varied and multiethnic population of Tingbjerg.

The process of registration and collection was exhibited in a wooden shed together with field books, photographs, notes, herbarium and collected seeds.  All of the species registered were listed on a large map of Tingbjerg. Some materials from workshops held with classes of 7th grade from Tingbjerg School were also on display.

The project is named after the book Species Plantarum by the Swedish botanist Carl von Linné in which he presented the Latin naming and the system for the categorization of plants that we still use today. The shed was situated and is still (the work has been donated to the school) on the main street, Ruten in Tingbjerg.

Dimensions: 210 x 160 x 140 cm
Materials: mixed media.

A house for collecting and playing. KØS, Museum of Art in Public Spaces

2012

The work Sættekassehus is about collecting-games and is inspired by the traditional sættekasse ("printer’s drawer"). It was made in relation to an exhibition about art and children's play grounds in KØS, Museum of Art in Public Spaces. Each participating artist in the exhibition was given an assignment with a focus on a particular children's game. The work examines the way children collect and organize the objects they collect.

Collecting is a game that contributes to the strengthening of the feeling of identity. It is a way to discover the world. When children organize objects, they do it from their own understanding of the world. This results in an order that adults may find chaotic, but makes sense to the children.

Camilla Berner created a framework for the collecting-game of children. The collections and the order of the objects shown in the Sættekassehus changed over time as children and adults visited the exhibition and played with the work. Each order of the objects looked completely different depending on the person organizing it.

Dimensions: 170 x 140 x 180 cm
Materials: wood

FURTHER READING:

KØS

Growth Growth Growth 

2011

Poster created and exhibited during the Danish National Election campaign 2011 as part of the project tilVALG, where 30 artists created posters that related to the event. The posters could be seen in public space in Copenhagen and Aarhus and in the exhibition spaces Rum46 and TrykTrykTryk. The aim of the project was to explore the conditions of democracy, the voice of the people and the wish for positive change.

Camilla Berner’s poster involved a play with the letters of the word 'vækst' (growth), one of the most frequently used words during the election campaign. The word develops into nonsense ending with the word 'væk' which means ’gone’ in English.

Project curated by RUM46, Aarhus and TRYK TRYK TRYK, Copenhagen

Dimensions: A3

MAD Food Camp Festival, Inner Harbour of Copenhagen.

2011

Camilla Berner was asked, along with 5 other artists, to participate with an artwork for the food festival MAD Food Camp festival. The festival was organized by René Redzepi (Noma), Thomas Harttung (Aarstiderne) and Claus Meyer. The festival included food stalls with new Nordic food and a symposium. It was held on a wasteland site in the inner harbour of Copenhagen.

Camilla Berner created the site-specific video work Moss Garden for the festival. The idea was to use only what was already on the site. The project was inspired by Berner’s work Black Box Garden. She cut the grass on the festival site and revealed the moss growing underneath it, turning the hierarchy of grass and moss upside down. Shaping it as a circle gave the landscape a character of a man-made construction – like the crop circles that inspired the design of the MAD Food Camp Festival. However, the moss was revealed by hand and the area was a no shoes-area. It added a feeling of slowness inspired by the Japanese understanding of moss as a beautiful garden plant that offers calmness.

Using the existing plants and transforming them into a garden is for Berner a way of drawing attention to the otherwise overlooked and undervalued. In this way she is exhibiting and questioning the culturally constructed hierarchies that dominates our view of and relation to nature.

Dimensions: cut in Ø400 cm

Krøyers Plads, Copenhagen.

2011

Black Box Garden is a project that took place between April and November 2011 at Krøyers Plads, a wasteland site situated in central Copenhagen (Denmark) by the harbour. The site was cleared and had been vacant since 2004. Berner cultivated a site-specific garden made from the existing vegetation and materials such as gravel found on the site.

In high season, Berner did a couple of hours of garden work on the site every day and wrote about the day’s work and experiences in a logbook. Through the gardening she investigated the site as a public space and the use of it while waiting for a building process to begin in autumn 2012.

Within the project Berner also mapped out the diversity of the plant species growing on the site - the most expensive and contentious wasteland site in Copenhagen of the time, and she observed the many interests involved in this particular semi-public place.

The list of species that was collected counts 92 different kinds and represents a ’Black Box’ of this site; a recording of what has taken place here and what influenced the development of the vegetation. For example, the site contained a lot of sand, that was brought there for sand beach café lying on the site between 2001-2004. That sand introduced some plants unusual to an urban site like this, and it also has had a great impact on the way things have been growing and developed here.

Today, the site contains some of the most expensive residential and commercial properties in Copenhagen and the quay is a popular hangout spot.

Black Box Garden is a collaboration between the Danish art organisation, ’Contemporary Art in Public Spaces, ’Publik’.

The logbook is published online on a blog hosted by ’Public’, see www.publik.dk/blackboxgarden.html

The logbook has also been published as a book in English in 2014:

Black Box Garden, Camilla Berner
Copenhagen, Denmark: Publik, 2014
Pages:166
Dimensions: 15,2 x 21,6 cm
Cover: hardback                                                                                         
Color: full color throughout
Edition size: 300
ISBN:  978-87-997365-0-8

Text: English

Price: DKK 199 (plus delivery)

Interested in a copy write cb@camillaberner.dk  or get a copy at Half Letter Press. http://www.halfletterpress.com

Location: “Rigsarkivgrunden”, Amager, Copenhagen

2010

The project focused on highlighting the aesthetics of overlooked and ignored weeds and plants growing on the wasteland site. By collecting and transplanting the weeds in plant beds in the shape of round concrete building elements found on site the plants were framed and their value and aesthetics highlighted. The plant beds were situated along a path crossing the wasteland site and connected the metro station with the local living and working areas. The plant beds served as decoration and had small information signs telling facts about the individual plants: whether they are edible or useful in any medical ways, and if any myths are connected with the plant.

Today, the site is no longer a wasteland site, instead properties have been built, amongst others the headquarters of the Danish bank Nordea.

Photos: Alice Lempel Søndergaard

Location: The Faculty of Science, Taastrup Campus, University of Copenhagen

2007-2010

The work focuses on the short cut - the action of taking the shortest and quickest route through or across something instead of walking around it, following a constructed path. The work consists of a network of paths based on short cuts made and used by employees and students at the Faculty of Science, Copenhagen University. The paths are traced and drawn by the users themselves. In this way the paths become a documentation of the movements of the people using the area – a testimony of the activity in the campus site. There are 750 running metres in total and all paths are paved with white granite stone. 

Short cuts are often changeable and overlooked. By tracing the short cuts and making them visible and permanent Camilla Berner highlights them and draws attention to the discrepancy between the way we design and construct our surroundings and the way we actually move around in them. 

The title of the work, White Route, refers to the white spots on the map – the undiscovered areas. Through the network of paths, the undiscovered infrastructure of the campus site is mapped and made visible.

Realized for The Danish Building & Property Agency (Bygningsstyrelsen) in collaboration with Schønherr Landscape.

Dimensions: 750 m x 40 cm
Materials: white granite stone

Location: Professionshøjskolen Metropol, Nørrebro, Copenhagen

The Urban Garden is a public commission made for the Danish Art Council at Professionshøjskolen Metropol, Nørrebro, Copenhagen.

2010

The work is centred around a garden, covering two groups of small hills paved with sett paving around circular plant beds. The idea was to produce an image of the meeting between city and nature, visualize the layering of the city and highlight the force with which plants and trees overgrow and break through the civilized and controlled city landscape. The choice of plants was directly determined by the vegetation growing on a nearby wasteland site. All species on the site were registered and collected as seeds in a seed bank, installed inside the campus. Of the total amount of 124 species 58 were selected and used in the garden. The species consist of a mixture of weeds and wild plants.

The highest point for the garden is approximately 1,75 m. Total area: 250 m2.

Realized for The Danish Arts Foundation.

Guld og grønne skove

Location: Carlsberg Tapperihal, Copenhagen

2009

Directly translated the title of the site-specific work Guld og grønne skove is “Gold and green forests”. It is a Danish proverb meaning the same as the English proverb “To promise somebody the moon”. The work was situated in Carlsberg Tapperihal, Copenhagen, in connection to an extensive collection of different tree species and rare plants in the garden of J.C. Jacobsen, the founder of the Danish brewing company Carlsberg.

The starting point for Berner’s work was the plant and tree collection’s expression of a curiosity and interest towards the world, foreign cultures and living organisms. The work Gold and Green Forests grew out of the feeling that something had changed; that, in Berner’s own time, more than 150 years after J.C. Jacobsen’s garden was created, the attitude towards the surrounding world is very different, less open and less curious.

Porcelain signs, like the garden’s original botanical ones, were put up by the roots of a selection of trees with foreign origin. Instead of botanical facts about the trees, the signs had quotes from recent discussions in the newspapers about the expulsion of Iraqi asylum seekers, the debate about the Danish burqa ban and other expressions showing our ambivalent and fearful relation with the unfamiliar ‘other’. 

Bakkedraget og venner

Location: Herlev, Denmark

InstantHERLEV – Suburb Site Environment. Curated by Anja Franke.

2009

The work was part of the group exhibition InstantHERLEV – Suburb Site Environment. Anja Franke curated the show which took place in her own home in the residential area Herlev. Berner’s work was created in collaboration with Johan Franke, the son of the curator, who was 10 years at the time.

Cacti and succulents often travel between people in the form of cuttings. They are passed on from generation to generation. The exchanges of the plants contain memories and stories. They tell stories about personal relations. In the work ‘Bakkedraget’ and Friends both the personal stories and the stories of the plant’s travels are inherent.

Camilla Berner and Johan Franke sent out invitations to people in the neighbourhood asking them to join the project by contributing with a plant and its story. The donated cacti and succulents were exhibited in a shed in Anja Franke’s garden together with photographs of the plant exchanges and notes telling the stories of their travels and ways of connecting people.

The work showed the travels of the cuttings and plants between different homes, their crossing of the boundaries of houses and families.

Location: Jyderup, Sølyst by the Skarre Lake, Denmark

A work for the group sculpture show Pastiche

2009

The work was made specifically for the surrounding green area of Sølyst Castle, a landscape that inspired the painters of the Danish Golden Age. The landscape is associated with a pantheistic world view in which the divine is inherent in nature. Berner’s work questioned this idyllic image of nature as she put a Giant hogweed cut out in wood on a raft floating on the lake. The hogweed is viewed as a dangerous and invasive plant and is being fought hard, but the plant was introduced in Denmark on purpose in the 1800s as an ornamental plant. This view of the plant has turned 180 degrees. The work suggests a rethinking of the dominating ideas of nature and shows some of the many nuances and contradictions of the relationship between humans and nature.

Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen.

Deep Green, group exhibition. Curated by Sebastian Schiørring and Camilla Berner.

2009

Precious Things and Stuff We Don’t Like consisted of a seed bank that stored and presented seeds from all of the plant species growing in a small wasteland site in Nørrebro, a highly urbanized area of Copenhagen, where green oases are in short supply. This little haven of an untended garden lay behind a tall fence and the vegetation included a wealth of modest weeds, indigenous species, immigrant and invasive plants mixed with a few random garden varieties. The site covered an area of 1716 m2 and 124 plant species in total were registered. Their seeds were collected and exhibited.

In 2008 on Svalbard in Norway a huge seed bank was opened. It can hold a reserve of 4,5 million seed species of the world’s crops which is to protect thousands of foodstuffs from climate changes, wars (including nuclear wars) and natural disasters. Seed banks are a kind of Noah’s Ark – we save, but in the selection process, exclusions are also made. They express a potential, but also the dread and doomsday prophesy they materialize. There lies an enormous power in having the earth’s crops in seed form, the germ of life.

Berner’s seed bank explores as subject and as a metaphor, what criteria govern which of nature’s resources, we choose to preserve and secure and asks: Should we preserve and secure or adapt?

Wastelands and the plants growing in these places are not prioritised as an asset in regular town planning.

Precious Things And Stuff We Don't Like also discusses local town planning strategies and the lack of will to ensure biological diversity.

The exhibited seeds were later used in the public permanent garden The Urban Garden that was established at Professionshøjskolen Metropol in Copenhagen in 2010. The leftovers of the seedbank were permanently installed inside the campus.

Materials: seeds, tube glasses, rubber plugs, labels, wood, glass, cooling unit. The seeds are kept in a display case cooled down to +5 C°. 

Dimensions incl. plinth: 160x45x45 cm (pyramid: 35,5 x 40,24,5 cm).

Download folder HERE

Location: De Gamles By, Nørrebro, Copenhagen, May-Sept.

From the group exhibition Den Nye Almindelighed (The New Ordinary).

2008

The sculpture was installed in May on a freshly cut lawn. During the 4 month exhibition period, the grass was cut around and to the edge of the sculpture, but never underneath it. When the sculpture was removed there was a square of long grass that revealed that even ordinary lawns consists of far more species of plants than one would assume.

The work was reconstructed in 2017 for the exhibition Art & Nature at Vejen Art Museum.

Dimensions: 395 x 395 x 85 cm. Materials: wood, existing vegetation in the lawn. 

Vild have

Location: Krøyers Plads, København

2007

A site-specific garden made from wild plants and other materials like cobblestones found on the site Krøyers Plads in Copenhagen. The wild garden was made in collaboration with local children who also created a football lane in connection to the garden. The garden was in many ways a preliminary study for the 2011 project The Black Box Garden.

2006

For one year Camilla Berner registered paths made outside the official paths (like short cuts) in public parks in central Copenhagen. The paper works are cut-outs of the paths registered. The green lines indicate the unofficial paths and the yellow and white lines indicate the official paths.

Cut outs, inkjet print, A3 paper, 180 gr.

Fra et planteperspektiv

Berlin

2005

In this research-project Camilla Berner examined alternative ways of structuring recreational areas by taking on the perspective of plants.

The particular structure of a recreational area represents a certain view on nature. It creates a certain kind of space that gives rise to certain kinds of social behaviour. What would happen if the vegetation itself was allowed to control and shape the planning of city parks?

Berner focused on a site in Berlin consisting of two separate areas: 1) a public park with an information sign telling about the plants growing there and 2) a similar area with no public access allowed. The vegetation in the second area was considered wild. By mapping the plants growing in both areas and comparing them, Berner worked out a pattern from the way the wild plants and weed had spread and grown in the inaccessible area. The growth-pattern of the untamed plants was used as an ideal structure for a park, suggesting another way of thinking and planning urban spaces. By shifting the perspective from the planned structures to the perspective of the plants, the work examines how our view on nature affects our surroundings and our behaviour in public spaces.

GUK+

Iceland/Germany/Denmark

2005

For the exhibition venue GUK+ Berner created The Path in a Park is what Stops the Grass consisting of four works shown in four different spaces: a kitchen in Germany, an outhouse in Denmark, a garden in Iceland and a laptop.

Berner focused on weed and our relation to it, in this case the dandelion. In the kitchen in Germany visitors had the opportunity to taste dandelion juice and read recipes featuring this everyday weed to learn how to cook meals with dandelions. In the outhouse in Denmark pots with dandelions covered the floor and spread their fragrance in the room. A photograph in the back of the room showed Berner enjoying the fragrance of a dandelion. In the Icelandic location Berner installed magnifying glasses to enlarge and draw attention to the dandelions in the garden. For the fourth space, a laptop, Berner created an animation showing a dandelion grow (watch it here).

In all four works the usual view on dandelions is turned upside down drawing attention to the overlooked and positive perspectives of a plant that is usually seen as a weed; something unwanted, that you as a gardener simply wants to get rid of. By doing this Berner questions our notion of what is “good nature” and what is “bad nature” and draws attention to the fact that our view on nature is culturally constructed and that a different relation to nature is possible.

FURTHER READING:

GUK+

Kort og fiktion

Location: Fælledparken, Østre Anlæg og Amorparken in Copenhagen

Collaboration with artist Maria Finn and landscape architect Katarina Carlsson.

2005

Alternative maps with guides for three city parks in Copenhagen. Camilla Berner registered paths outside the official ones made by users of the three city parks. She named the alternative paths “cut corner paths”, “pee paths” and “shadow paths”. Maps of the alternative routes were created and placed by the main entrances with free paper copies for people to take with them on their walks.

By tracking how people create their own paths in parks, the contrast between society’s intentions and the way the parks are actually being used is exposed.

Mælkebøtteruten

Location: Søndermarken, Copenhagen
For the show Layer 4 - Exterior. (www.layer-skulptur.dk)
2003

Location: Esbjerg, Denmark.
For the exhibition SPOR .
2007

In 2003 Berner traced the unofficial paths and shortcuts in the city park Søndermarken in Copenhagen. In 2007 she did the same in a park in Esbjerg in Jutland, Denmark.

Berner created a sign with the wild flower dandelion to mark the unofficial paths and shortcuts in the two city parks. With a reference to the official scenic route in Denmark, The Marguerite Route (marked with the Marguerite flower), Berner’s Dandelion Route questions our perception and ideals of beauty in nature.

For the exhibition in Esbjerg a wall painting picturing the dandelion sign was added together with a leaflet about The Dandelion Route for the audience to bring on their walks.

Point of View / Andre RUM, FLS Hal, Valby, Copenhagen.

2003

Site specific installation. Grass sown directly into the cracks between the concrete elements in the floor of an old abandoned industrial building belonging to the company FL Smidth. The grass growing in the cracks inside mirrored the situation outside except that many different plant species grew outside. In an existing picture frame inside the building a list displayed all the plants that Camilla Berner registered in the area around the building, an abandoned industrial area.

The title of the work is inspired by a song by the popband Heaven 17 and refers to the relation between the law (parliament) and the concrete reality (pavement). The grass is violating the “law” and opposing the intended system and order by growing in the cracks in the concrete inside the building.