She calls it a dream assignment. Raising a sixteen-hectare forest on Ærø, a small island in the Funen Archipelago. A forest that can never be cut down. It is the biggest task of her life, not just in terms of scale – covering an area equivalent to around twenty-five football pitches – but also in terms of time. Only if Camilla Berner grows very old will she ever get to go for a walk in the fully-grown forest. The different temporal perspectives embedded in the task make it a particularly dizzying prospect. It operates with different timescales: tree time, human time, planet time. Because the island of Ærø’s decision to significantly increase the amount of forest on the island has to do with climate and biodiversity issues.
The idea for the forest arose when the municipality of Ærø received an EU award for its good work in keeping small island communities alive. A total of 6,500 people live on Ærø, and the island attracted many new citizens during the Covid pandemic. It still does. Having won the award, a decision was made to earmark the prize money for green projects. Out of this, a new idea emerged: Ærø would grow a new forest on former farmland purchased by the island’s residents and businesses in collaboration with the local authorities and Naturstyrelsen Fyn, the local branch of the Danish Nature Agency.
Then, a farmer put a piece of land up for sale. The local authorities put in an offer but did not have sufficient funds, prompting the idea of crowdfunding the planned forest by selling shares in it. “It’s quite funny,” says Berner. “Every time the local newspaper printed an angry letter written by opponents of the project, more shares were sold.”
This spring, Berner became involved in conversations about how art might be incorporated into the project. The general mood did not favour a sculpture park in the vein of Skovsnogen or Wanås, or to have art delegated to the pathways or the parking lot. After long discussions, it was decided that Berner would be in charge of the forest itself. As a result, for the first time ever, the Danish Nature Agency will now plant a forest with an artist at the helm of the proceedings.
Camilla Berner is not a surprising choice for the task. She has worked with nature in all sorts of guises for the past twenty years. One of her best-known projects is Black Box Garden (2011), the large garden she created on a construction site in the middle of Copenhagen using existing plants and gravel from the site. Her spectacular wooden pavilions with roofs made from invasive species such as broom and rose hip have been shown throughout Denmark. The permanent work Ice Age Relocated (2021) comprises five large artificial stones placed in five different locations in the Copenhagen region, each representing a characteristic landscape shaped by the last ice age.
Considering the sword dangling heavily over our burning globe, surprisingly few artists, in Denmark and internationally, work earnestly with climate issues. Probably because the subject is so fundamentally depressing, the enemy so elusive, and, to make matters worse, even a part of ourselves. Well-intentioned efforts often end up as single-issue activism in front of parliaments or, turning to the symbolic end of the spectrum, as land art that suggests an off-grid dropout lifestyle. Both are perfectly valid responses. Even so, it is striking that an issue we know for sure will dramatically change life on our planet in the next decades, for humans and animals alike, is not more prominently featured in contemporary art.
“Like everyone else, I am regularly dismayed by the dire outlook for the climate and biodiversity,” says Berner on the phone from Herregården Odden in Hjørring, where she is currently showing an exhibition based on the dried plants collected by the Danish artist J.F. Willumsen in New York around the year 1900. “At the same time, I am sincerely hopeful about the ambitious nature of this forest. The island community has not waited for nationwide agreements and state funding, but instead taken action on a matter that’s currently on everyone’s lips. They have even brought art on board as part of the project. That’s highly motivating, and I am very aware of the trust they have placed in me.”
Even though Berner cannot be persuaded to provide an in-depth explanation for the collective shell shock that has stalled much artistic thinking regarding the biggest problem of all, her own artistic path might still shed some light on the matter. After graduating from the Chelsea School of Art and Design in London, she worked quite a bit outside Denmark, but in recent years has almost exclusively worked within its borders. This is not just about avoiding the climate impact of flying and shipping art around, but about her way of working.
“When you make art that works with nature or climate issues, you quite simply have to slow down,” she says. “The earth, the soil is where it is; you have to stay close to it to become familiar with it. That also applies to the hidden codes about nature embedded in our culture. It has taken me years to understand and decipher how a particular view of nature is implanted in our culture, and also how that outlook can be different in one part of the country compared to another. It all takes place where we are.”
Berner lives in Amager in Copenhagen. Last week she was in Nykøbing Falster to inaugurate one of her artworks in a newly established park. Yesterday she was in Ballerup to do a workshop for school children about plants, and in a few days she will give a talk at Løgumkloster Folk High School about plants as artistic material. All in all, she is probably among the Danish artists who have travelled Denmark most widely. Working with nature is also about being available to the people who live where she digs, plants, or otherwise intervenes in the landscape: “I make a point of getting involved in the local community. People must be able to talk to me about what we are doing, what the process entails and what the objective is. It should be of value and edifying for all parties.”
What does a forest planted by an artist look like? Should you be able to tell that it’s art?
“That is the big question, and one that quickly leads to: What is art? How does art present itself? Should it solve something or represent something? In recent decades, many landscape architects have experimented with creating forests that are more like parks, so-called urban forestry. You can also shape the trees at an odd angle as they grow, so that their crowns grow together in a spectacular way. In such cases, the intervention is very clear.”
“You can also work with the hidden layers, attach a narrative to the choice of trees, or use species that improve the soil. I am currently studying different people’s relationships with forests and am, for example, quite inspired by the environmental activist Vandana Shiva’s writing about forestry in India before the colonial era’s efficient view of nature took over. She talks about how trees and people are connected by a special sensuous sensibility, for example by the soft way the light filters through the leaves.”
“I have always been fascinated by Allan Sonfist’s Time Landscape park in Manhattan, which plays with the visible and invisible aspects in exciting ways. Sonfist laid out the park from 1965 to 1978, planting species of trees, shrubs, grasses, and flowers that covered Manhattan in the early 17th century, back when the island was still inhabited only by Native Americans. It is still there, right the middle of Greenwich Village, and is fully grown. Actually, it looks like every other park in the city. Only when you read the sign or have the project explained to you does the magic happen, right in front of your eyes. Then the same trees look completely different. It’s like a typhoon of time rushing through your head – a distillate of the plants and trees that were here before the settlers came. And that happens when you get the information. Which gives rise to other questions: Do you need to read about the forest on Ærø before seeing it? When exactly does it manifest itself as a different kind of forest? How do you even present a forest with an artistic layer to it to the public?”
Contrary to the park in Manhattan, the forest on Ærø is not about showing the vegetation of earlier times. Rather, it is about promoting new vegetation on a very large scale and in a race against time.
What are your thoughts on the combination of the urgency of the situation and a slowly growing forest?
“It is a paradox, yes. The many different timescales are a fundamental condition underpinning the entire project. Perhaps that holds true for all art working in this field. Establishing a forest like this, where you promise each other that it can never be cut down, is a powerful and deeply meaningful act. It’s like a new zero point. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the sense of time you get from an old tree. The deeply furrowed bark bears witness to a long life, which is humbling to us as observers. Time lies embedded in the bark, in the size of the tree, in its anchoring in the ground, in all the time that passed before a forest is there. At the same time, the context for this new forest is a situation of great urgency. And in fact, the beneficial effect only sets in after many years; only older trees absorb CO2 in serious quantities. Everywhere you look, you will see that newly planted trees are getting bigger and bigger. Nobody has time to wait.”
“I think a lot about how all these timescales can interact in this project, making sense and adding poignancy throughout the whole process, right from the preparation of the soil to the sowing of the first seeds in the coming years, over the many years of growth to the very large tree crowns I might not even get to see.”
Camilla Berner grew up in a forest herself, being born outside Faaborg into family that made a living from forestry and still does. She remembers the large logs lying in stacks waiting to be picked up by a sawmill. Such mature tree trunks also nourish microbial life, insects, and so on. Now she is considering whether similar stacks could be placed in the new forest only to never be picked up, turning things upside down and reversing time. And perhaps it might be possible to 3D scan some of the island’s very large trees, have them printed and placed in the new forest, slowly decaying while the real trees grow up, playing with the dual processes of building up and breaking down things. Seeds can also be taken from the sparse forest already found on the island, contributing to the biodiversity, or from trees in people’s gardens. Because this project is also about the people on the island.
“A unique culture.” That is how Berner describes Ærø. “There is so much energy in the fact that the people on the island initiated this project, and so it is super important that the forest and the islanders are closely entwined. They should continue to feel the same sense of ownership of the forest; we shouldn’t just be ticking boxes in a nursery catalogue. Perhaps we can get seeds from the big splendid trees that people have in their gardens. I love hearing people talk about their old garden trees, how they planted them with their husband sixty years ago. The biggest disadvantage of newly built residential areas where people simply roll out a dull desert of grass covering everything is that they are not rooted in time and nature. I try to think of the whole island as a unified organism that contributes to the forest.”
Berner is due to deliver the concept for the forest by the end of the year. Once the plans are approved, it will take approximately one and a half years to obtain the relevant permits and prepare the land for being transformed into a forest. It is likely that the first trees, due to be planted in the spring of 2026, will not be taller than half a metre, partly due to budget restrictions and partly because the roots of large plants are more fragile and difficult to move.
Art in public spaces is a difficult genre because of the many compromises required and the endless unforeseen challenges. Planting a forest on Ærø is no exception.
How will you ensure that the forest doesn’t end up as just another nice gesture or well-intentioned piece of land art that doesn’t really make a difference after all?
“In this case, the unique aspect is that the art is not a representation of a forest. It is the forest. Not a big forest, but a big work of art. The situation is urgent and complex, and establishing forests takes time. But that must not make us falter and stop. There is something beautiful in nature taking its time as it always has. Hopefully, art can help make that tangible – make us understand what the forest means to us and to the entire ecosystem.”
“The political perspective is exciting too. The green tripartite agreement, due for its final negotiation in the Danish parliament this autumn, aims to raise an extra 250,000 hectares of forest in Denmark. This will inevitably be a long process; just finding the land can easily take several years. Hopefully, the forest on Ærø can serve as an example of how this can be done through local initiatives and also offer an artistic take on what the vast amount of woodland that has to be raised all over the country might look like. I think that the power of community will be absolutely decisive: that there are many of us who do this together. The story of the forest becomes closely entwined with that of the islanders. A tree is not just a tree, but part of the island’s story.”
