We Walked the Earth

The Pavilion of Denmark at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia will present a total installation by Uffe Isolotto. We Walked the Earth invites audiences to step into a hyperrealistic world where elements from idyllic Danish farm life of the past blend with strange sci-fi phenomena from the future to create a haunting image of an uncertain present. Occupying the entire Pavilion, We Walked the Earth will present an unexpected drama that revolves around a centaur family of three in a transhuman world. Visitors will enter their home and encounter the inhabitants as they walk through the rooms containing their belongings, food and working tools. It will not be obvious what has happened to them and the world they live in. The whole setting will be haunted by a deep uncertainty. It will be impossible to tell whether it is tragic or hopeful, or perhaps both. While the centaurs will at first seem strange, their struggle will not. Faced with the challenging realities of an ever-changing world, the family will experience a deep existential and ecological struggle. It’s the basic struggle of navigating a present that is becoming increasingly complex and unpredictable. Who do we become when the world we know no longer exists? Do we seek refuge in who we were, or do we look for escape routes in what we might become? Best known for his works with physical and digital sculpture, We Walked the Earth emerges out of Isolotto’s enduring exploration into the intersections of the body and the machine and takes it to a new scale with this elaborate total installation. Uffe Isolotto says, ”I am excited to present We Walked the Earth to visitors of the International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The installation brings humans and animals very close together, but only to show how torn between the past and the future we are at this present time in history, as well as the complexity of dealing with this much hope and despair.” We Walked the Earth is curated by Jacob Lillemose and realised with the support of a group of collaborators who will contribute to the installation with: model work (10 Tons), taxidermy (Fyns Naturværksted), humanoid parts (Thomas Foldberg Studio), clothing and accessories (Anne Sofie Madsen), sculptural elements (Soft Baroque, Maria Koshenkova, Ida Hy), scenic painting (Christine Bechameil and Marie Søegaard Tarpø) and graphic design (Line-Gry Hørup). Jacob Lillemose says, ”We Walked the Earth addresses an experience of being human in a time when human life is becoming more and more integrated into – if not inseparable – from contexts and processes that are both other-than-human and larger-than-human. Does that mean that we need to expand the notion of what it means to be human? That’s the fundamental question the installation asks.” We Walked the Earth will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated short-story conceptualised collaboratively by Isolotto and Lillemose and written by Lillemose himself. Uffe Isolotto (b. 1976) works with physical and digital sculptures, as well as time-based media such as film and animation. He graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2007 and is currently based in Copenhagen. He has participated in exhibitions both at home and abroad, including Arken Museum of Modern Art, Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art, Nikolaj Kunsthal, Malmö Konsthall and the 14th Media Arts Biennial in Santiago, Chile. He is represented with works at the National Gallery of Denmark and Holstebro Art Museum and has been commissioned to do several large-scale public art projects such as Bodies on Balconies for Vendsyssel Theatre in Hjørring, Denmark. Isolotto ran the exhibition and production platform Age of Aquarius together with Nanna Starck from 2016-2019. Through curations and work production, Isolotto cultivated different ecologies, both biological and synthetic, and over time, the two separate tracks have merged into a practice that encompasses body, technology, and ecologies in the broadest sense. Jacob Lillemose is a curator and writer based in Copenhagen. He works at the museum of medical history and culture at the University of Copenhagen on a project about “the entangled body” called The World is in You. He co-curated Momentum 9: Alienation in Moss, Norway in 2017 and was head of exhibitions at the transmediale festival in Berlin 2012-2013. From 2015-2017 he ran the exhibition space X And Beyond dedicated to art and disasters. He has written extensively on art and movies in an international context, recently with a focus on horror and social mythologies. He holds a PhD in art history from the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of the novel Architecture Zero (A Mock Book, 2021) and the essay collection Strange Ecologies. A Planetary Perspective on Human Life (A Mock Book, 2022, in Danish). Danish Arts Foundation promotes and supports Denmark’s contemporary art internationally through grants, collaborations and projects. Commissioner: Danish Arts Foundation Curator: Jacob Lillemose

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