MARGRETHE KOLSTAD BREKKE
HOW TO IMPLEMENT UTOPIA

07.06. —
25.08.2019

In Margrethe Brekke’s artistic journey, the hang glider is an anchoring element for a numerous series of projects and collaborations that have led the Norwegian artist to incorporate urgently current themes in her work, such as climate change and the need for renewable energy sources.

Her textile installations reveal her interest in Airborne Wind Energy, which utilises wind energy through flying devices such as drones or kites. In these installations, she initially played with the form and meaning of the kite, and later with its more technological evolution represented by the hang glider, the first device to grant humankind flight, transforming utopia (and hybris) into reality.

FLYING SCULPTURE

How to Implement Utopia has resulted in the creation of two hang gliders. One was conceived as a Flying Sculpture and public artwork, used for the entire summer by the Garda Flying Paradise flight school on Lake Garda, tracing the ideal connection between eco-philosophical thought (theorised in Norway in the ’70s by philosopher and mountaineer Arne Naess) and the Alpine landscape around the South Tyrolean capital.  

A Coded Manifesto of Contemporaneity

Margrethe Brekke’s work consisted of designing the decoration of the sails, in a combination of patterns and ornamental motifs hand painted on Dacron fabric. The artist used the 17 colours documented in the “Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development”, drafted by the United Nations in 2016, associated with the 17 objectives that need to be achieved in the next fifteen years, through a program of action that establishes a series of crucial objectives for humanity and the planet.

Utopia is by definition a place that doesn’t exist but designed as a map of what’s on the horizon, it can generate the potential for change.

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