Nathalie Djurberg
Dark fairy tales in clay animation.
Nathalie Djurberg makes clay-animated films, often with music by Hans Berg, about desire, violence and shame. She won a Silver Lion in Venice in 2009.
Nathalie Djurberg was born in 1978 in Lysekil on Sweden's west coast. She studied art in Gothenburg and graduated from the Malmö Art Academy in 2002. She lives and works in Berlin and is one of the most internationally acclaimed Swedish artists of her generation.
She makes clay-animated stop-motion films, in which figures of clay and plasticine are moved a little at a time and photographed frame by frame. The figures are clearly handmade, with fingerprints and uneven surfaces. The films resemble children's programmes or fairy tales, but their content is dark: desire, violence, power, shame and anxiety. Animals, women and children often end up in situations that are both absurd and disturbing, and the humour makes it even harder to look away.
Since 2004 she has collaborated with the musician Hans Berg, who composes the music for the films. The sound builds the atmosphere and is an important part of the works. Together they have created large installations in which the films are shown among sculptures of clay, plants and strange creatures.
In 2009 Djurberg received the Silver Lion for a promising young artist at the Venice Biennale for the installation The Experiment. She has exhibited at major museums in Europe and the United States. In recent years the duo have also worked with virtual reality. Her work has helped animation to be taken seriously as an art form.