Genuine Nature, New Zealand (2019)
136 x 117 cm
Archival pigment print, Dibond, framed
2019
Installation view, group show One Picture Manifesto, Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki 2019
Genuine Nature, New Zealand is a singular piece photographed in Wellington, New Zealand just s few kilometres from the core of the city. There lies a fully-fenced wildlife sanctuary, a restored forest and freshwater ecosystems conserved as closely as possible to pre-human state. Genuineness is monitored and guarded closely. Non-native species are obliterated.
Genuine Nature, New Zealand visualises the odd and unequal quality of human-nature relationship. On the one hand, nature is a resource for a man, and on the other, its independence is celebrated. Post-human approach shakes the foundations of these conceptions questioning the need to built polarities.
New Zealand offers a wonderful setting for critical observer of nature: as an isolated combination of islands, it provides distinctive habitats for many of its endemic species. This originality is celebrated by a man, and the Kiwi nature is turned into a tourism attraction. Funnily humans are working hard to preserve something they do not belong to. This can be seen to be an act of beautiful altruism, or yet another trial to govern the environments surrounding the humans.
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