Petra Johnson

In the beginning, my work addressed transnational entanglements on a subjective level. On moving to Jixiang Village as an artist in residence at Lijiang Studio and guest of the He Family (2018-2020), I began to appreciate the limitations of my understanding of the boundaries between human and more-than-human. The experience intensified a search on how to TUNE into forms of cognition that I cannot grasp with vision or language. My DIY practice is informed and guided by the given, the tools at hand, a phone, the cadence of my voice (sculpted in the lower Rhine plains), the generous contributions of friends and the notion of the marvellous. Moments of wonder that surface in an ordinary day. Moments that lift me off the ground to find - on landing - that the earth, forever moving, has shifted that ground.