We are pleased to present A Slow Longing Collapse, a solo exhibition by the artist Sofia Albina Novikoff Unger. The exhibitions centerpiece is a video installation that explores artificial interventions in nature. Nature is never left behind, but reappears in transformed formats by tapping into the duality of the fictional and the present world.
The video, which is episode one of three, shows how nature is hybridised together with artifice on a larger scale.
“Episode 1“ has Niva as its point of departure - a tired trickster character, in search of a disappeared friend. Niva’s narrative imagines a fictive world, set in the future while talking about the ‘before’, some time around 2100. This weaves together ideas and concepts from biological and cultural strands concerned with new technology, like chimeras; brain decoders; angel particles; moonlight as a cure; quantum computers; and the ‘efficiency dilemma having gone wrong’ amongst other things.
The video combines footage shot in various places around the world together with CGI imagery and touches upon the postmodern sublime, where the sublime object of infinite greatness has been replaced by technological processes and become spectacle, that is, nature as constructed artefacts.
The sci-fi-esque narrative oscillates the rabbit character between contemporary space-time and the fantasy about future space-time. Niva is creating an imaginative realm, and through wilful imagining, becomes on one hand a leitmotif of repression of coexistence between the animal and the human, and on the other, a proposition for how to vacate the “here and now” for a “there and then”.
Surrounding the video are several video wall holograms projecting different scenes of Niva and other objects transforming and dissolving. In the space there is also an insect robot programmed to function on its own accord.
About the artist:
Sofia Albina Novikoff Unger is a Danish Russian artist who lives and works in London. She recently graduated from the MFA programme at Goldsmiths University, and recent shows and screenings include: ‘Sea2_Serafim Selected Ontology Screening’, Seager Gallery, London (2019); ‘Befriending Hyperobjects’, Navel, Los Angeles (2019); ‘Abracadabra’, 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow (2018); ‘Donna, Amore, Delfino’ (solo), Relæet, Copenhagen (2018); ‘Videoclub: Selected VII screening’, Whitechapel Gallery; CCA Glasgow; Nottingham Contemporary; Fabrica; Plymouth Arts Centre; Exeter Phoenix, UK (2017)
