Tanja Engelberts — Cities

Limited Edition

Cities
Special edition from an ongoing project about the North Sea, 2020
Digital print on aluminium
Print size 19 x 13 cm, frame size 29.5 x 24.5 cm
Limited edition of 30
Signed / numbered in verso

€ 300,- unframed
€ 400,- framed in black painted wood veneer

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Tanja Engelberts (1987) investigates the duality between the romantic landscape and its economic reality in today’s world. Places of interest range from rural Wyoming to the endless North Sea, and linger on the history of fossil fuels.

The landscapes in recent projects were once the source of prosperity and are now going through significant changes.  Reasons can be found in the exhaustion of the landscape’s resources, or the abandonment of projects that are no longer economically viable.

In her latest project, she returns to the North Sea, investigating artificial cities of concrete and metal in an apparently empty sea. The harsh conditions at sea make the offshore industry almost the ultimate symbol (icon) of man overcoming nature. Artificial cities of concrete and metal in an apparently empty sea. They leave a lot to the imagination. In recent years companies have retracted their operations, the project investigates how to document a landscape that is demolished and no longer there.

By visiting and reading about these landscapes she is interested in developing speculative visions of the future in text and images, in which, by thinking through geological time, she wonders what happens to processes that people set in motion, but which have consequences that will manifest themselves long after our own deaths. The scratched material on which Cities is printed comes to life in the sunlight and suggests a previous usage.