I have spent my entire life in cities. Fascinated by diverse and distant landscapes, and as a true 21st century tourist, I scan Google Earth for exotic sightseeing. I am so used to my urban environment that pictures of far-flung wilderness seem unearthly; in fact, they could easily be extraterrestrial.

The primary source for the Terra Cognita series is aerial footage of isolated lands. From the distance of a space satellite and without any context it’s impossible to distinguish a mining quarry from a desert valley, an extraction site from a salt flat - both look desolate and mesmerising. 

I’m not interested in building hierarchies. Rather, I want to document these phenomena side by side, regardless of their origin, as parts of a new and ever-changing ecosystem, and explore how the landscape genre can evolve to reflect all the complexities of the modern interplay between humanity and nature. 

Reproducing these images in clay gives a materiality and a sense of closeness to the terrains that are so completely out of reach for most of us, to the point of illegality. Framed and hung on the wall, within touching distance, they seem to claim: “I was here”, allowing the viewer to get familiar with the unknowable.