In animistic beliefs, a rå is said to guard over natural phenomena. They watch over a domain like a mountain or a bog and can act on visitors by foretoken, or less often, in physical figure. Rå is also a term for an unprocessed substance or plant from nature, which retains some of its vitality and juiciness.

The exhibition Rå in Floras rike is connected to two places in the Botanical Garden and in the nature reserve Vitsippsdalen. The sites are characterized by the decay of exotic and native plants from the greenhouses and the park, as well as the decomposition of trees and leaves in the old-growth forest just outside. In the exhibition, a meeting between them takes place in an animated film where the plant material is choreographed into changing structures in a flow. Three wooden vessels, whose shapes came through impulses from Vitsippsdalen, can be seen as physical containers for the site’s intangible rå. Visitors of the exhibition are invited to go to Vitsippsdalen via a map for a meeting with the place through a guided visualisation that they listen to via their mobile phone.

The exhibition explores an ancient language, where natural phenomena are subjectified and create a meaningful bridge between humans and the environment. In an encounter between the landscape and human imagination, related beings arise that live between us and the more-than-human field. The exhibition is an ongoing study of this dynamic: how an external reality is reflected in an internal reality and vice versa.

Bring your mobile phone and headphones to experience all parts of the exhibition.

Bio

Ulrika Jansson’s practice has its roots in place and the interconnections of the natural ecology and culture. The art works: installations, sculpture, drawing, performance and stop-motion video, take the form of meeting places and objects that provide space for a reconsideration of our relationship to ecological systems. In public artworks and in interdisciplinary projects, she develops opportunities for collaboration and in-depth contact with the more-than-human. Ulrika Jansson is based in Göteborg and educated at Konstfack MFA in Stockholm.