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Lena Gudd

Mail. mail(at)lenagudd.com
Insta. @lenagudd

— Updated website coming soon.

As an everyday commitment, I explore human and nonhuman entanglements within the subarctic and arctic regions through the prisms of photography and environmental humanities. My research-creation is a critical and curious engagement with more-than-human worlds, opening up questions of living together on a troubled planet. 

 

Ever since a first coincidental visit in 2012 to the mining town of Fermont, Canada, I have been dedicating my life and work to the complex and multiple spaces of the North. Since then, I have been engaging with impacts of extractivism, industrial architecture, or the power of imagination on/in Northern multispecies communities, as well as with related challenges linked for instance to food justice, toxic bodies and landscapes, or feminine subsistence. A few years ago, I moved to Tromsø/Romsa on the Norwegian side of Sápmi, where I am particularly intrigued by the tensions between western and indigenous ways of life in the region. 

 

Currently, I think-create through plant-based photographic processes, ranging from fermenting my film rolls or film souping them, to developing the negatives in organic homemade developers and making contact prints with plant juice. Weather phenomena, hands, water, salts, berries and bacteria help to think through issues like sustainability, preservation, economics, or ethics concerning both our plant companions as well as photography.

 

The multiple theoretical lenses I employ to navigate these different webs are in many ways linked to feminist environmental humanities, indigenous studies, materialisms and social anthropology. Building upon participative long-term fieldwork, my holistic research involves a reciprocity that the thinking-with other species and nonhuman actors demands. Using my analogue medium format camera as a compass, I connect with beings, things and places, allowing for genuine exchanges on all levels. Feeling rather than seeing, I let myself be guided and surprised by the flow of interactions, leaving space for the quiet and hidden dialogues.

 

Throughout this process, I sit with the questions of research ethics and sustainability, constantly questioning my own gaze and role as a researcher. From a place of connection and respect for the more-than-human beings involved, I engage with different ways of knowing and doing in order to give and enrich. 

Solo exhibitions

Wild und Frei, RAW 17 Photofestival Off, Worpswede, DE (Oct. 2017) // La trace invisible des gens, Maison de la Photographie Robert Doisneau, Gentilly, FR (Oct. 2015-Jan. 2016)

Publications

Gudd, L, & Pons Braley, A. (2021). Banlieue Nord – How we inhabit the North and how the North inhabits us, Nordlit, no. 46 (December):132–159. // Gudd, L., Gaudy, H., Houlette, M. & Jacquot, S. (2015). Traces – Lena Gudd. Berlin: Tumuult.

Group exhibitions

Kleinodien und Preziosen, Mimi’s Erbe, Worpswede, DE (Nov.-Dec. 2021) // Tromsø Open: Kunstbutikk, Tromsø Kunstforeningen, NO (Sept. 2020) // LensCulture Emerging Talents, Klompching Gallery, New York, USA (Dec. 2018) // Raw – resisting extractivism, Tromsø University Museum, NO (Oct.-Nov. 2018) // New Psychedelics, Humble Arts Foundation, online exhibition (July 2018) // Landscape in Mind, Gudd & Pons Braley, Paris Berlin Fotohaus, Festival des Voies Off des Rencontres d’Arles, FR (July 2018)

Talks

Thinking-creating with plants through developing analogue film in seaweed, workshop, UiT Environmental Humanities network, Tromsø, No (Nov. 2021)// Atelier de recherche-création sur l’imaginaire du Nord, International Laboratory for Research on Images of the North, Winter and the Arctic, UQAM (March 2021) // Thinking with the North, talk and screening, Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, NO (Jan. 2020) // Cultural research and research-creation projects in the circumpolar North, Arctic Arts Summit, Rovaniemi, FI (June 2019) // Performing An Archive of Norths, Spacial landscapes – archives, senses, cocreation, NTNU ARTEC, Kunsthall Trondheim, NO (Feb. 2019) // An Archive of Norths, projection & performance, Raw resisting extractivism conference, UiT, Tromsø University Museum, NO (Oct. 2018) // Photography delimited, Le Boudoir 2.0, Monat der Fotografie Off, Berlin, DE (Oct. 2016)

Awards

LensCulture Emergent Talent Award 2018 (Oct. 2018)

Affiliations

Associated researcher at Imaginary North, the international laboratory of compared multidisciplinary studies of the representations of North, UQAM, Montreal, CA // Norwegian organisation for photographers (Forbundet Frie Fotografer) // UiT Environmental Humanities Network

Artist Residencies

FF Kronprins Haakon, The Nansen Legacy, Longyearbyen – polar ice, 82′ north (Sept. 2018) // Experimental travels & landscapes, Kunsthalle Below, DE (Aug. 2018) // Prima Ink Artist Residency, Tromsø, NO (May 2018)