^{_{Exhibition documentation by Stefanie Schaut at KRIEG Gallery Hasselt (BE)}}

The Mobile Oasis Project

This work was made on the Arctic Island of Sørøya (NO) during a residency in Northern Norway in 2017. Thanks to LWC, RAVI Residency, Family Saetereng (NO), Alicja Melzacka and Stijn Maes.

(2018) Installation (ca. 320 x 150cm), camel wool, paper-mache, 8 glass bottles, prints, sahara sand, 2 jerrycans, print (dibond, 118,9 x 84,1 cm)

The Mobile Oasis Project is an installation playing with the mythification of exotic animals. Derriving from a photograph made on the North-Norwegian island of Sørøya in spring 2017 while undertaking a residency, the work discusses the presence of two camels on the arctic island.

Although camels are often believed to only inhabit tropical places on earth, their bodies are in fact equally well-adapted to roam the cold regions of the north. Scientists discovered camel fossils on the island of Ellesmere, which has the same latitude as Spitsbergen. The installation in KRIEG Gallery consisted of a pop-up filling station, inviting the visitor to fill his waterbottle with water extracted from the hump of a camel. During the exhibition, the literary role of camels as a ‘water-container’ has been questioned; a role which they often fulfill in children books and movies. The work contrasts this false perception with a photograph of the two Arctic camels; a real photograph, which in turn has been mistaken as a photoshop manipulation by many visitors.

^{_{Exhibition documentation by Stefanie Schaut at KRIEG Gallery Hasselt (BE)}}

^{_{Exhibition documentation by Stefanie Schaut at KRIEG Gallery Hasselt (BE). Water is being tapped out of a camel hump.}}

^{_{Exhibition documentation by Stefanie Schaut at KRIEG Gallery Hasselt (BE). The Caravan/ 8 liters of water pumped out of the hump of an Arctic camel.}}

^{_{Exhibition documentation by Stefanie Schaut at KRIEG Gallery Hasselt (BE).}}

^{_{Photos of Arctic Camels on the island of Sørøya, Norway. Photo Credits: Miriam Sentler}}