Winter installation - Freedom to Roam

We are happy to announce that the winter fieldwork installation was created last week.  Swedish artist Henny Linn Kjellberg's latest ceramic installation, 'freedom to roam', comprised of an over-sized barbed wire fence made with ceramic barbs, comments on land ownership and private property rights. 

Following is the artist's statement:

Freedom to Roam
(Allemansrätt / All men’s right)

wood, fence wire, ceramics
2009

Freedom to roam is a comment on land rights and the use of land. In Nordic
countries the freedom to roam is written in the constitution and an unspoken
knowledge that people are brought up with. Humbleness and respect is
woven into the concept: leave a site untouched, in the state that you found it.
Use, but don’t exhaust. Nature belongs to everybody – and nobody.

In North America there is a lot of private land and restricted areas. No
trespassing signs are common things for those who live here, but a strange
concept to a visitor. The ownership of land raises a lot of questions: what
is public, what is private? What is public space? Who controls it? Who has
the right to use public space and to act there? What gives some people the right to
deny others trespassing?

Those questions inevitably lead to another major theme that inspired
Freedom to Roam: conflicts, war and migration. Nations, borders and
crossings. The barbed wire fence in this context represents the ambiguity
and arbitrariness in the way that decision makers in states with more power
control people coming in or running away from the less powerful nations.
Who is granted access and who is not?