Oslofjorden

2022, series of photographs and installation

 

All around, pine trees lay scattered across a battlefield - a forest turned into a war zone. What if they could be raised again? Repaired, revived, given the chance to live once more? To offer shelter to birds again. What if time could be turned back to a lost life, at the speed of light? What if there were a light that could make this possible?

 

In every small life - in every bird, every flower - there is another light, hidden. Waiting for someone to notice it. To let it shine. All around us.In 2021, in the Garkalne region, and significantly, during the final months of its protected status, forest “sanitation” work began - coinciding with the start of the bird nesting season. Numerous violations were recorded. In what was claimed to be a sanitary cleaning, five times more trees were cut down than legally permitted. Ironically, the diseased trees - the supposed targets - were largely ignored.

 

Healthy trees, essential to the forest ecosystem, were felled indiscriminately. On the very day a law was enacted to protect trees with woodpecker-made hollows, one such rare pine - already a scarce habitat in Latvia - was cut down. It had served as a home to dozens of birds each year.

 

When it was discovered the pine was unsuitable for timber, it was simply cut into pieces and discarded.

 

What happened in this forest in the spring of 2021 was difficult to call anything other than a genocide against nature.