The assembled trees come from the harbour of Gothenburg in Sweden. When Lagomarsino was doing research for a public commission there, he found out that a small forested area was being cut down, as it worked as a hide out place for migrants that were trying to illegally board the boats to England. The artist collected the cut trees and reassembled theme using copper plates, installing the new assembled trees between two trees, in front of the police station in Malmö, where you apply for national ID card and passport.
A Country’s Landscape deals with tensions inherent to the notions of identity and citizenship. With increased migration flows and a heightened nationalistic rhetoric, a changing sense of nationhood has re-cast the universalistic aspirations of citizenship into a divisive and exclusive light. The idea of European diversity gives way to the notion of European homogeneity behind closely guarded frontiers. The artist in interested in the contradiction (in the violent action) of that the Swedish National State destroys nature so that it can control it borders. At the same time the reassembling can also be read as a reflection on the formation of identities and how we all carry many bits and parts of our pasts in our new or present identities. By re-creating them, the artist alludes to the notion of identity formation in transition.
