Nathalie Djurberg's 'Claymations'.
Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg's intricately constructed claymation films are both terrifyingly
disturbing and artlessly sweet.
disturbing and artlessly sweet.
The new works created for the Venice Biennale explore a surrealistic Garden of Eden in which all that is natural goes awry.
She exposes the innate fear of what is not understood and confronts viewers with the complexity of emotions.
Nathalie Djurberg was awarded the silver lion for a promising young artist at the Venice
Art Biennale 09.
(http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/6886/nathalie-djurberg)
Research Djurberg's work in order to answer the following questions;
1. What do you understand by the word 'claymation'?
The word claymation to me, is basically combined clay with animation. it is a form of animation which are created by taking many shots of images of the sculpture made out of clay, or other mouldable materials. This way, it makes the animation film becomes a much more "real-life" like comparing to computer graphics animations.
2. What is meant by the term 'surrealistic Garden of Eden'? and 'all that is natural goes awry'?
The term surrealistic means things which are unnatural, mysterious and dreamlike, which these points are things which cannot be seen in reality. Garden of Eden, is a once perfect place which when Adam and Eve was first created by God according to the bible; with the term surrealistic added on to the garden of eden, it becomes, a mysterious, terrifying garden.
"all that is nature goes awry", I think it means that people look at surrealistic artwork which look natural at first, but when we think deeply, and explore this artwork, there is more than it looks, things are not always natural, and time to time, nature will change itself, and becomes things we don't expect them to be.
3. What are the 'complexity of emotions' that Djurberg confronts us with?
Djurberg wants audience to have a range of emotions such as curiosity, fear, and disgust. In her claymation artwork, disturbing scenes were shown with her clay sculptures, things we do not see in the society now, which we think these actions shown by clay figures are wrong.
one of the example whichi think Djurberg showed in one of his clay sculpture are work are this flower, with blood leaking from it and spilling over the floor.
4. How does Djurberg play with the ideas of children's stories, and innocence in some of her work?
An example of her films, it has ideas of traditional fairytale ideas towards children, animal as characters as such which knows how to speak, human flying, trees walking, as in tales strange and magical things will happen.
5. There is a current fascination by some designers with turning the innocent and sweet into something disturbing. Why do you think this has come about?
I think these designers are trying to create something what they call " new ", something we don't see every day, such as turning an innocent piece of artwork, into a violent erotic piece of work. We will often first think it is disturbing, and that's what the designer wanted us to think, but later on, we will start to think deeper and start to think it is actually pretty interesting. In my thought towards this idea, i do find it quite fascinating, but I'm not really into this kind of idea.
6. In your opinion, why do you think Djurberg's work is so interesting that it was chosen for the Venice Biennale?
i think one of the main reason why Djurberg's work was chosen is because of the extraordinary idea he has towards this artwork; an idea of making disturbing artwork which will not only catch viewers first impression, but also will it will make it last.
Having artwork which cannot be seen oftenly in the reality are always the most interesting ones, and also will be able to make audience think why is Djurberg creating these kind of artwork.
7. Add some of your own personal comments on her work.
To be honest, I am not a big fan of claymation, specially with her disturbing, disgusting work.
But as I was researching about her and looking through her work, I do find it fascinating that there are people like her which can create something like this, thinking out of the circle, and surprise and influence the world, Especially with the amount of time she put in, the claymation.
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