Signe Søjberg Højlt

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About

My practice originates in the performing arts, where I have worked interdisciplinarily for many years. Since 2021, I have developed my work within performance, video, and installation with an increasingly activist expression.Through repetition, rhythm, and a ritual approach, I work with transformation, hybrids, and contrasts. My works explore power and injustice, the climate crisis, untouched forests, and the ways humans take control over nature and habitats.I work in the field and experiment with sound, the body, and presence in specific natural environments and spaces.My artistic work is closely connected to my political engagement in various social movements. I have created activist works, facilitated discussion salons on activism, and led workshops in futures thinking, where participants explore their own voice and agency. For me, art is not separate from society — it is a way of taking part in it.

Projects

Photo: Emil Nørholm Pedersen

◆ 2025 ◆ Performance ◆ 20-25 min.

The Branch Bearer is a silent poetic performance; a walking act that, through its simple choreography, sheds light on the incomplete life cycle of a tree. The Branch Bearer dreams of green tree crowns and fulfilled forest life.The performance is a reflection of decades of deforestation around the world; an echo of a hundred years of forest clearing and degradation in favor of industrial agriculture and urbanization.
Our overconsumption of wood has also cost us irreplaceable wildlife, and the Planetary Boundaries have long been exceeded.The Branch Bearer carries ten branches sourced from the re-creative urban forest, Riis Skov, near Aarhus.

Photo: Markus Hasselgaard.

◆ 2025 ◆ Video ◆ 3:20 min.

The majority of Denmark's forests have, over time, been sacrificed to agriculture and construction, and there is always something disturbing the remaining forest and nature.As an anthropomorphic figure, I appear in an ambiguous narrative of budding hope and irreplaceable loss.Untouched is a kind of conversation with my local urban forest, Riis Skov.

◆ 2024 ◆ Video ◆ 1:53 min.

The Caterwoman is a hybrid character; half human, half caterpillar.
In the work, my fascination with habitats, (reverse) land-use change, and processes of transformation is expressed as a snapshot of a caterpillar's life on its way to transformation.

◆ 2024 ◆ Video ◆ 5:13 min.

LAWN WITH A VIEW is based on the concept of Horizon Scan, a method that seeks to predict and identify future threats before they become a reality. In this work, the focus is on invasive species, which increasingly challenge our ecosystems.In the horizon, a human figure emerges, only to be shot down again and again. The shots originate from a readymade digital recording of a rifle, consciously used as an alien and violent force within the piece.Who is the most invasive species in the world?

◆ 2023
◆ Installation/Sculpture

In the installation Suicidal Snails, I explore the relationship between humans and nature, and how power is exercised over what we label as "undesirable." The work is based on the Danish Environmental Protection Agency's call to combat invasive species – species that displace the original biodiversity and are therefore considered a threat.The snails are staged as symbols of the undesirable, and in Suicidal Snails, they turn their gaze towards their own extinction, reclaiming control over it. By choosing their own death, they stage a quiet yet powerful protest against the biological extermination war they are subject to.

◆ 2022
◆ Installation

In Arriving on the Shores of Europe, I unfold an artistic reflection on migration, inequality, and the human consequences of war and conflict.Behind the work lies a sense of powerlessness and a desire to create space for contemplation. Why do we distinguish between groups of refugees? Why do we not help boat refugees? Who decides which lives should be saved?Arriving on the Shores of Europe questions the inhumanity of our selectivity.

◆ 2021 ◆ Performance ◆ 10 min.

In the choreographic work The Caterwoman - the performance, I explore the relationship between humans and nature through a performative hybrid larva figure.The Caterwoman is a human-like, neon green larva sent out to find a new habitat.
Equipped with a helmet, she moves cautiously and inquisitively into the domain of humans, a foreign zone where her survival depends on new territories.

◆ 2021 ◆ Video ◆ 7:22 min.

Not sorting stuff out #2 turns its gaze toward the things we ignore, hide away, or choose not to take responsibility for. The work delves into themes of pollution and the lack of international accountability.Taking its point of departure in specific issues such as the dumping of nuclear waste and oil barrels into the oceans, the piece becomes an exploration of the traces humanity leaves in nature.Not sorting stuff out # 2 draws on the tragicomic as an aesthetic approach; here, serious questions of ecological disaster and human discard are addressed through humor and bodily absurdity. The piece reflects on the unresolved and the unwanted, opening up a sensory awareness of our collective responsibility.

◆ 2021 ◆ Video ◆ 2:50 min

Sorting stuff out is my first video work – an interdisciplinary, performative piece in which gumballs, human beatboxing, and choreographed actions become tools for exploring selection and belonging. Who decides which ball gets a bowl? Who is chosen – and who is left out?With a tragicomic tone, the piece questions how we structure our communities and relationships – both politically and personally.