“Large earth formations, like mountains, have fed the imagination of our predecessors. Where we see Earth, they saw Titans and Giants fighting to shape the Cosmos. Now these Cosmological gods have fallen into oblivion, they lay silent and unsung. Forgotten. That connection with Earth is long lost”.

Coming across Helle Siljeholm’s The Mountain Body has been an experience with a profound effect on me. The scale of humans, hanging, crawling, and caressing the rocks awoke a long-lost ritual. The Mountain Body addresses mountains, and rocks as living entities, with curiosity, awe, respect, and affection. Today more than ever, we are in need of reconnecting with nature, recalibrating our values according to nature, decelerating our frenetic pace, and listening to its low frequency, its humming sounds and whispers, which command a less arrogant, less self-destructive way of life.

The invocation of the mountain gods, the spirit of the earth, is not yet another New Age escapist refuge. It is a metaphor and a powerful message for an active approach to nature. Currently, the landscape of so many territories has been ravaged and scarred by wildfires, floods, exploitation, and lack of respect. Connecting the Mountain Bodies through the Mountain range is like giving an electric pulse to the spine of Earth. Awakening the chthonic dragon, our collective conscience.”

Poka- Yio, artist and curator, co-founder of the Athens Biennale, about his experience as a spectator of The Mountain Body by Helle Siljeholm.