Surface Subjects (2026)
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Archival pigment print on baryta, 30x30cm, 2026
Surface Subjects is a series of photographs — or more precisely, reprographic images derived from a 1969 photogeological reconnaissance report of the Disko–Nuussuaq area on the west coast of Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), found in the map archive at GEUS (Geological Survey of Denmark and Kalaallit Nunaat). Across these images, a textual layer is laser-engraved directly into the emulsion of the analogue film.
Composed of abstracted language from geological surveys and research(ers), this layer obscures access to the visible landscape, while simultaneously pointing to the very practices used to search for minerals below the Earth’s surface.
The work draws attention to how geological science itself participates in a process of separation: extracting knowledge from site, translating land into data, and in doing so detaching it from its embodied, historical, and political relations. What emerges is a chain of abstraction – land becomes maps, maps become deposits, deposits become reserves, risk profiles, and ultimately future potentials – forming the basis upon which extractive industries are enabled to operate.
Installation view: Contingency Sample, Verksmiðjan á Hjalteyri, Iceland (2026)
Surface Subjects is a series of photographs — or more precisely, reprographic images derived from a 1969 photogeological reconnaissance report of the Disko–Nuussuaq area on the west coast of Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), found in the map archive at GEUS (Geological Survey of Denmark and Kalaallit Nunaat). Across these images, a textual layer is laser-engraved directly into the emulsion of the analogue film.
Composed of abstracted language from geological surveys and research(ers), this layer obscures access to the visible landscape, while simultaneously pointing to the very practices used to search for minerals below the Earth’s surface.
The work draws attention to how geological science itself participates in a process of separation: extracting knowledge from site, translating land into data, and in doing so detaching it from its embodied, historical, and political relations. What emerges is a chain of abstraction – land becomes maps, maps become deposits, deposits become reserves, risk profiles, and ultimately future potentials – forming the basis upon which extractive industries are enabled to operate.
Installation view: Contingency Sample, Verksmiðjan á Hjalteyri, Iceland (2026)