Nanna Riis Andersen

Sti Vild Sti

Formation Gallery
2024

Sti Vild Sti - about life's paths, turns, coincidences, and decisive moments. Getting lost, losing your direction, standing at a crossroads, and maybe finding your way through it all in the end.

In an interaction between the abstract and the concrete, the inner landscape and the exterior, the near and the distant, Riis Andersen creates poetic close-up images of a shoulder, a leg, and a piece of clothing, which before our eyes seems to transform into diffuse landscapes, only to then take its shape again. A fold in a sleeve becomes a gentle hill that meanders, other textile drapes become lakes that wander and paths that find their way.

Water is a pervasive element in Riis Andersen's works. Water as a connecting element between bodies and nature. Water as a necessity for life. Before we are born, we are surrounded by water, our body consists in large parts of water, and most of the earth is covered by water. Water is in us, and around us. Water as a theme and material is reinforced on several levels; partly through watercolor - in a series of watercolors that outline a new direction in the artist's practice - and on silk that waves through the room, as well as on the wall in a pigment and water-based mural.

Like a hanging arrow, creepers, or nerve pathways, silver chains hang down from the ceiling, with words and symbols that connect us to nature, our ancestors, and our history – what we come from and what we will become. Like a silent echo that calls to us. For Riis Andersen, the chains also create associations with jewelry – heirlooms that bind people together. In the same way, the clothes that fold around the characters, Riis Andersen paints also hide a story about the person who wore them. Sti Vild Sti is both about getting lost and about finding your way – in everyday life and your dreams, about belonging and breaking away.