Lily Pad
The Southern Forest
Lily Pad is the name given to the United States’ hidden military bases abroad. They contain ammunition, are often manned, and are always ready for combat. It is also the name of a work by visual artist Laura Hjort Jensen at Deep Forest Art Land.
Just as with the hidden American military bases, a small army has taken over an area in Deep Forest Art Land—specifically at Anna Holmberg’s bridge *Experience in a Garden*. The army consists of the perennial, fur-white plant *kæruld* and ammunition that only the sharpest eyes can detect; more than 90 copper-plated objects—such as wooden trestles, woodpecker shields, blackberry thorns, rose thorns, badger claws, belly button piercings, chains, as well as thistle stalks and the undercoat of a spitz—are strategically distributed, representing the army’s combat-ready state.
Lily Pad is the first in Hjort’s series of four works, one for each season. In addition to its reference to military bases, “Lily Pad” also refers to a water lily leaf, and what these works have in common is that they grow wherever water is present and leave an invisible trail through the forest. Here, they take root next to another work in Deep Forest Art Land and grow into a network of works. Over time, they creep forward like a small, persistent army that, in brief bursts, stands out clearly to visitors, only to retreat again and blend into the surroundings.
The work is part of the "Young Contemporary Art" project and is supported by the Obel Family Foundation.
Photo: Jacob Friis-Holm Nielsen
Title: Lily Pad
Year: 2024
The Artist
Laura Hjort (b. 1992) graduated from the Jutland Art Academy (2023) and the Bergen Academy of Art and Design (2019–2020). She has exhibited at KH7 (DK), Haus Contemporary (DK), Kunsthal Aarhus, and Bergen Kunsthall (NO), among other venues.
One of the defining features of Laura Hjort’s work is the connections she creates between her small works, viewers, exhibition spaces, and works by other artists—based on the ecocritical idea that we are all equal participants in a vast network with everything around us.
She is particularly interested in exploring the power and potential of the humble and unassuming object. Through her small-scale works, she incorporates her surroundings into large-scale installations in which it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where they begin and end.
The works are often linked to other artworks in order to explore what happens when different positions of power and narratives are physically brought together in a diffuse, insistent, and at times convulsive manner.
See the artist