The Human Orchid

7 december 2024—21 april 2025

Ystads konstmuseum presents the largest solo exhibition to date with artist Lena Bergendahl. The exhibition’s title work is the completely new science fiction film “The Human Orchid”, in which we follow a group of mystical individuals in the hunt for knowledge about humanity. In the exhibition at Ystads konstmuseum, the film is shown for the first time and becomes part of a large spatial installation in which the observer moves between finished film and branches of the process of coming into being.

Lena Bergendahl, still from "The Human Orchid", 2024

About the Exhibition

For three years, Lena Bergendahl worked with the film “The Human Orchid”, which is the point of departure for the exhibition at Ystads konstmuseum. In the film, we follow a group of individuals who look to be humans, but whose behavior suggests something else. They seem to be connected to each other through a sort of network or root system. Do they come from the plant kingdom? Or maybe from the world of technology? Through sessions reminiscent of psychological personality tests, their perceptions and orientation abilities are evaluated. Together, they perform different examinations to approach an understanding of humanity.

Other main characters in the film are the bog and the fly orchid, a wild and very unusual orchid species that thrives in damp soil. The fly orchid, which grows in certain places in Scania, has insect-like flowers and lives in symbiosis with another species; to a male thread-waisted wasp, the fly orchid appears to be a female thread-waisted wasp. Ignorant of the fly orchid’s true nature, the male wasp believes it is mating with the flower, thus contributing to pollination. Philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari describe this process in their book “A Thousand Plateaus”, saying the boundaries between insect and flower are unlocked; the flower becomes more like an insect and the insect becomes more like a flower. “The Human Orchid” is about this dissolution of the lines between forms of existence, about mimicry and, through these methods, becoming a bit of something different.

At Ystads konstmuseum, Bergendahl’s new film is shown within a large spatial installation where the boundaries are also dissolved between the finished film, its process of coming into being, and the exhibition space. Along with the new film and a number of freestanding works from the same project, Bergendahl’s short film “An Image of What You See” from 2021 is being shown. This film, too, moves between different stages of what it is, shows, and tells. In “An Image of What You See”, a filmmaker tells about a film she is working with. The film within the film is about a woman who loses her eyesight and gains a visual prosthesis that impacts how she orients herself between her inner world and what we think of as reality.

With film, images, objects, and text, Bergendahl makes connections every which way across natural science phenomena, philosophical thought models, and film and literary history references. In these connections, new stories arise that, like the orchid’s underground rhizome, propagate themselves in a variety of directions.

The films are looping in the exhibition and last about 30 minutes (“The Human Orchid”) and 20 minutes (“An Image of What You See”) long. Both films are in English with Swedish subtitles.

The exhibition is being shown on the museum’s third floor.

Lena Bergendahl, still from "The Human Orchid", 2024

About the Artist

Lena Bergendahl, born 1982 in Pixbo, currently claims Malmö as her home base. Her projects, which typically span over several years, examine such themes as the origins of images and humans’ relationship to technology. She often blends together fictional scenarios, documentary elements, and archival material in installations that include film, photography, sculpture, and text. Bergendahl received her master’s in Fine Arts from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm in 2010. Her works have been shown in such exhibitions as “An Image of What You See”, Galleri Gerlesborg, Gerlesborg (2023); “To The Looker’s Left”, Vermilion Sands, Copenhagen (2022); “An Image of What You See”, Galleri Format, Malmö (2021); “Digital Mutants”, Celsius Projects, Malmö (2019), and “Environs”, Lunds Konsthall, Lund (2018).

Curator: Ellen Klintenberg, Curator, Ystads konstmuseum