YGGDRASIL - Dana Cojbuc
Yggdrasil, 2019 © Dana Cojbuc
During a residency on the island of Halsnoy in Norway, Dana Cojbuc produced the photographic series Yggdrasil , named after the world tree in Norwegian mythology.
In her images, Dana Cojbuc uses photography and drawing to capture reality and invest it with her dreams.
On this small Norwegian island, the dense, humid forest faces the calm sea, mixed with fog from which a few ghostly islets emerge. There, nature imposed itself on Dana Cojbuc with force but without violence; the artist seems to have simply let herself be swallowed up by the power of the elements.
The forest, above all, has come to mingle with her memories and her imagination. In Dana's eye and under her fingers, the very real Halsnoy forest takes on an enchanting appearance: sometimes disturbing, sometimes soothing... always captivating.
Dana Cojbuc's photographic work draws on the contributions of other artistic techniques: volume and depth of sculpture, the art of storytelling inherent in video, exploration of the intimate through drawing...
For Dana, drawing is a way of reintroducing the secret part that reality feeds on to push, throb, and escape from defined constraints. This is also the artist's intention: to restore organic contours to this nature that cannot be constrained by the perfect geometric form imposed by the camera. An image or a landscape will only become ours when we have placed a part of ourselves in it, intimate and secret - fragments of a dream or a wave of imagination - when a memory comes to attach itself to it or when our desires come to invest it.
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During a residency on the island of Halsnoy in Norway, Dana Cojbuc created the photographic series Yggdrasil , named after the world-tree in Norwegian mythology.
In her images, Dana Cojbuc uses photography and drawing to capture reality and invest it with her dreams.
On this small Norwegian island, the dense and humid forest faces the vast sea, mixed with fog, from which emerge a few ghostly islets. There, nature imposed itself on Dana Cojbuc with force but without violence; the artist seems to have simply allowed herself to be caught up in the power of the elements.
The forest, above all, has become part of her memories and imagination. In Dana's eye and under her fingers, the real Halsnoy forest takes on enchanting appearances: sometimes disturbing, sometimes soothing... always bewitching.
Dana Cojbuc's photographic work is nourished by the contributions of other artistic techniques: the volume and depth of sculpture, the art of storytelling inherent in video, the exploration of the intimate through drawing...
For Dana, drawing is a way of reintroducing the secret part of reality that nourishes itself to grow, to palpitate, to escape from defined shackles. This is also the artist's intention here: to give back organic contours to this nature that cannot be constrained in the perfect geometric form imposed by the camera. An image or a landscape will only become ours when we have placed in it a piece of ourselves, intimate and secret - fragments of dreams or a wave of the imagination - when a memory comes to be attached to it or when our desires come to invest it.
Yggdrasil, 2019 © Dana Cojbuc
Yggdrasil, 2019 © Dana Cojbuc