HÄSSJA

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Competition, first prize

2020-2022

Grand Metis, Quebec, Canada

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Hässja is an installation for the 2021 and 2022 edition of the international garden festival. The installation investigates and enlightens one of many nearly lost arts of working the soil - the cultivation, harvest and drying of hay.

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In nearly all corners of the earth, the drying of hay and other crops has been an integral part of a sustainable agriculture. The installation is a reinterpretation of the methods of drying hay on wooden structures.

The three structures, made out of the very plants surrounding them, are not only  educational, they are formed and arranged in a way that enhances their inherited visceral qualities. 

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Unlike normal hay-drying structures, these have an interior room. The small space inside each provides a refuge from the world of today, and provides for reflection on man’s relation to nature, to past and future ways of inhabiting our land.

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Photograph by Camille Dombrecht