2,4-D is the chemical name of Hormoslyr, a herbicide that was sprayed over the Swedish forests during the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s to kill deciduous trees. This is the same herbicide (Agent Orange) that the U.S. army sprayed over Vietnam in the Vietnamese war. In northern Sweden, the spraying was the most intensive and you can up to this day see traces of how the forest was reshaped by hormoslyr and how generations of birch trees are missing.
”2,4-D” is a large-scale wall-drawing shown at Ground Controll, an exhibition at Bildmuseet curated by Clelia Coussonnet and Sofia Johansson. In this piece I worked with the idea of a giant blue splash (hormoslyr was tinted blue) as a way of catching the brutal force of this herbicide on the landscape. When you come close the piece is made up of minute drawings of things that are found on the forest floor: moss, lichens, sticks and pine cones.
