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"A long-haired yogi type torn limb from limb by a far more flexible snake; malleable men and women spanking and licking their way through orgies and acts of S&amp;amp;M; models-cum-kinky-mean-girls; and an arctic huntress hopping inside the fleshy carcass of her skewered prey: The content of Nathalie Djurberg\u2019s stop-motion animation is delightfully sardonic, but also fairly brave. The Swedish-born, Berlin-based artist doesn\u2019t hold back. Her painstakingly composed films give physical form to the sort of twisted visions, fantasies, and inner dialogues that many of us try our hardest to quell: the what-ifs, the fears, the perversions, the cold-sweat-inducing dreams.In this sense, Djurberg has found a perfect medium in clay. \u201CFew artists are using claymation with such a psychological charge to it,\u201D says Gary Carrion-Murayari, associate curator at New York\u2019s New Museum, which will house Djurberg\u2019s exhibition, \u201CThe Parade: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg,\u201D in its Studio 231 space from May 6 through August 26. \u201CIt\u2019s a format that\u2019s familiar to us from childhood, but her work never feels nostalgic. She uses her materials to imagine playing with your body in ways that would be impossible. She has created a unique visual language and the way she uses it, the way she can make these surrogates for our bodies and our emotional states is remarkable.\u201DThis latest exhibition is a dark, immersive installation that features five new animations scored by the artist\u2019s partner and collaborator, Hans Berg, as well as dozens of bird sculptures, each strikingly unique and handcrafted out of clay, wire, and strips of painted canvas. The show\u2014Djurberg\u2019s biggest U.S. outing to date\u2014originated at the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis, and will travel to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, in San Francisco, later this year.The 80 garish and menacing sculptures are the latest advance in a somewhat new direction for Djurberg, who first started creating environments for her work at the urging of curator Germano Celant (who organized her 2008 exhibition at the Fondazione Prada in Milan). This is the most ambitious environment she has constructed since her Silver Lion\u2013winning appearance at the 2009 Venice Biennale, for which she crafted an oversized version of the sinister forest that attacks the stripped-down protagonists in her film, The Experiment.Much has been made of Djurberg\u2019s blond locks, fair skin, and sweet demeanor, particularly in contrast to her startlingly graphic work. But in many ways these attributes confirm the larger point of her work: that these baser instincts exist within all of us, no matter how pretty or normal we might seem. Born and raised in Lysekil, Sweden, primarily by her mother (who, quite presciently, ran a puppet theater for several years), Djurberg studied painting at the Malm\u00F6 Art Academy. She was frustrated by the medium and nearly gave up art entirely until she started playing with puppetry and clay, filming scenarios with a Super 8 camera. Suddenly, something clicked. The process kept her disciplined; the childlike aesthetic allowed her to take her ideas, dark and twisted, as far as they could go. The films made their way into group exhibitions throughout Europe. Djurberg was showing steadily on her own by 2004, and by 2006, exhibiting with New York dealer Zach Feuer.Djurberg starts with a prompt, drawn from things she \u201Csees, hears, experiences, or feels,\u201D as opposed to a fully formed narrative. \u201CIf I already see it entirely in my head, there doesn\u2019t seem to be any need for doing it,\u201D she says, sitting next to Berg and speaking via Skype from their home studio in Berlin. \u201CIt starts as more of a curiosity, which makes me look for it. And when I find the way I want to see it, then I feel like I have the urge to make it.\u201D She likens the process to sketching. \u201CI am not that interested in making something that is perfect,\u201D she explains.The story is slowly shaped with each meticulously tweaked frame, photographed as an HD still that is then stitched digitally to the other stills with little editing. \u201CBecause of the fragmented aesthetic, you\u2019re always coming from one point and from that point, there are a million different ways you can choose to go,\u201D she says. \u201CSo you narrow it down and make those choices. I find it very interesting, especially when everything falls into place.\u201DOn screen, Djurberg\u2019s clay puppets move and emote impressively, their glances and gestures aptly signifying complex emotions like pleasure, bloodlust, and fear. Most of the figures have a fairly specific aesthetic: big eyes, lanky limbs, lumpy skin. It makes them look almost familial and allows them to inhabit a world uniquely their own (as do, say, the Simpsons, and the jaundice they share with other residents of Springfield).Djurberg is quick to note that Berg\u2019s accompanying music is key. The two were collaborators before they were a couple. \u201CA mutual friend forced us to work together,\u201D says Berg, a self-taught electronic music producer, with a laugh. As Djurberg recounts, \u201CI gave him a film that I didn\u2019t like\u2014I figured he couldn\u2019t screw it up because I hated it anyway\u2014and he turned it around.\u201D The music, which was largely electronic early on and has since evolved into something darker and more symphonic, \u201Cpushed the work in the direction that I wanted to go,\u201D Djurberg adds. \u201CAnd it humbled me a bit. The music contains you and keeps you focused. It creates an emotional aspect to the work.\u201DDjurberg\u2019s new films are not as explicitly sexual as fans might expect. Lately, she has been looking toward the animal world for inspiration\u2014birds, specifically. The artist has never thought much of them. She once considered birds to be fairly dull, their pea-sized brains lacking the capacity for much beyond flapping, pecking, defecating, and slurping down the occasional worm. It didn\u2019t help that she had had some personal experience with an unruly winged creature. When she was a kid, her mother rescued a seagull that had fallen from its nest and placed it in Djurberg\u2019s bedroom. It smelled horrible, and it shit everywhere, but her mother fed it, cared for it, and taught it how to fly by tossing it in the air and forcing it to use its wings. Then one day, that dumb bird just up and flew away.Ever since, Djurberg says, \u201CI thought there really wasn\u2019t anything interesting about birds, except for the way they display themselves\u201D\u2014breasts forward, wings back, beaks up. But in researching birds\u2019 predilection toward pageantry, Djurberg came across something else. \u201CThe more research I did, the more I saw that there is an awareness and intelligence in them.\u201D For instance, some species try to engage others through play, others can recognize themselves in a mirror, and others make big, blue exaggerated nests\u2014organic bachelor pads, if you will\u2014to attract a mate. \u201CIt\u2019s kind of remarkable what this tiny brain can do,\u201D she adds. \u201CThe more I looked at it, the more amazed and amused I got. That outward parade or display is really an inward search for all these funny rituals and emotions.\u201DThis unexpected dichotomy and the way it relates to human codes of conduct is the basis of \u201CThe Parade.\u201D The new films, all 2011, are installed throughout the artist\u2019s winged menagerie and set to an aptly haunting soundtrack by Berg (think operatic violins and the occasional blast of a foreboding horn). They offer a series of semirelated vignettes, each picking apart a human/animal interaction and the often-tragic consequences thereof.\u201CTypically, when you interact with animals you don\u2019t have to protect yourself so much in an emotional and psychological way,\u201D Djurberg says. But what happens when animals behave in ways that are decidedly more human? And when we give in to our own animal-like instincts?\u201CWhen you look at animals, you start to see the behavioral patterns that we have more clearly,\u201D Djurberg says. \u201CIt simplifies them, in a sense. And makes people wonder what we really are. There is this YouTube video Hans showed me of a dog playing the piano, walking on the keys and shouting. You look at this animal at the keyboard and think, What is he doing? Whereas with humans, we know that it is this drive to create.\u201DIn Bad Eggs, three pudgy old women yank a colorful pelican from the sky. They pluck its feathers and torment it until it starts to produce eggs. In Open Window, a strikingly similar bird plays an entirely different role, serving as protector and advocate to a young boy who\u2019s spooked by seemingly supernatural goings-on in his room (the window just won\u2019t stay put). In the end, he clings to the bird as a child would its mother.The most disturbing film on view is I Wasn\u2019t Made to Play the Son. In it, two men don Venetian-style bird masks and something akin to 18th-century European garb and torture and mutilate a woman while pacing back and forth atop her body. She calls out to one of them, via text scrawled in paint on the back wall (Djurberg\u2019s films never have dialogue), that she \u201Ctreated him like a son.\u201D His response, per the piece\u2019s title, is that\u2019s not a role I was made to play.As the woman writhes in pain, the bird-men start snipping away her extremities: first toes, then fingers, then nipples. Green, pink, and yellow clay seeps out of each wound. It\u2019s hard to watch, nauseating even, though the masks pose an interesting conundrum: Would it be quite so sickening if the perpetrators had not been men in masquerade, but actual birds? \u201CYou can\u2019t really say something is cruel when it\u2019s something one is not aware of,\u201D Djurberg says. \u201CWe don\u2019t use the word \u2018cruelty\u2019 to refer to how an animal behaves, we only use it with human beings.\u201DDjurberg herself struggles to watch the films sometimes. But, she notes, \u201Cif I\u2019m not nervous, and if I don\u2019t feel emotional about it or embarrassed, maybe it\u2019s not that important. Maybeit is too clear and too safe.\u201D\u201CYou have to invest,\u201D Berg adds. \u201CEven if you\u2019re a little scared.\u201DClick on the slide show to see the work of Nathalie Djurberg.This article appeared in the May issue of Modern Painters magazine.[content:advertisement-center]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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