Artist duo Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg: "We’re not teachers."

Video from Louisiana Channel

Artist duo Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg: "We’re not teachers."

“The animals or the people aren’t actors. They are symbols of different meanings and feelings.”

Meet the artist duo Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, who use clay animation to explore human beings' deepest and maybe most secret feelings and desires.

“We’re not teachers. You get more for not understanding that much, because what you think you understand if anyways just limited to your mind,” Nathalie Djurberg explains from her home and studio in Göteborg, Sweden. Mixing animation, music, and sculpture with her partner in art, Hans Berg, she has been creating disturbing and alluring video works and sculptures for more than two decades.

During her studies as a visual artist, Nathalie Djurberg started to feel like art was a hoax and “not what my fantasy had promised art to be,” as she puts it. That is when she found animation: “It was basically just vomiting out desires and things I did not understand,” she says and continues: “It didn’t become art until I made a turn around and asked myself why I needed to do that.” For Hans Berg, music was “a necessity”. “When I met Nathalie, my output found an outlet,” he says. Elaborating on how working with Djurberg’s animations is like as a musician, he says: “You can translate a texture or a colour into sound. And the atmosphere in a film into a mood in music. The tactility of the films is very helpful.”

“There is comedy inherent in the materials.” A recurring visual theme in the works is animals behaving like humans, or humans acting like animals. Many characteristics come from using animal figures like foxes, pigs and wolves – often inspired by folklore and fables. “The animals or the people aren’t actors. They aren’t specific roles. They are symbols of different meanings and feelings,” Hans Berg explains: “It’s not about them. They don’t have names or backstories. The sad wolf is very common; there’s always a crying wolf.” And Djurberg asks: “How can you resist a crying wolf?”. She argues that there is a closeness in the clay animation, imperfections are visible: “There’s a vulnerability in that. And the more vulnerable, the more painful. But also the more beauty.”

Nathalie Djurberg (b. 1978) and Hans Berg(b. 1978) create psychologically charged works that blend animation, sculpture, and sound to explore human and animalistic desires. Since 2001, Djurberg has developed a unique style of clay animation addressing primal instincts like jealousy, lust, and revenge. Her collaborator and partner, composer Hans Berg, crafts the hypnotic soundscapes and scores that accompany their installations. Since 2004, the duo has worked closely to create transgressive, symbolic narratives that draw from myths and nightmarish imagery, in works such as Tiger Licking Girl’s Butt (2004), We Are Not Two, We Are One (2008), Worship (2016), and Dark Side of the Moon (2017). Their immersive environments increasingly blur the lines between cinema, sculpture, and performance.

Based in Sweden, Nathalie Djurberg earned her MFA from Malmö Art Academy in 2002. Hans Berg is a musician and composer specialising in electronic music. Recent solo exhibitions include Gelleri F15, Norway (2025); SONGEUN Art Space, Seoul (2024); National Nordic Museum, Seattle (2024); Sammlung Goetz, Munich (2023); and Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon (2023), among others. They received the Silver Lion at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), and their work is held in major collections such as the Prada Foundation, Milan, and MoMA, New York.

Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg were interviewed by Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen in Göteborg, Sweden, in December 2024.

Camera: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan

Edited and produced by: Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen

Music: Gretchen Yanover, Upright Music

Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2025." from the video introduction

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