In February and March, the main gallery of Photo North – Northern Photography Centre will present Marko Karo’s video work Mirage (2025). Situated somewhere between fact and fiction, the work examines a planet in ruins as the result of our over-consumptive lifestyles. The work invites the viewer on a tangible journey into the middle of the desert.
World War I sent the demand for organic nitrate, the primary raw material for explosives, skyrocketing. This prompted Western mining companies to turn their attention to the Atacama Desert in South America, the only place on Earth where nitrate is abundant. In the middle of the world’s driest region, a string of mining towns sprang up in a short period of time, run from the wealthy metropolises of the north. In these towns, the mining companies acted as sovereign rulers, controlling the lives of the inhabitants down to the smallest detail. After the collapse of the markets, the cities quickly became deserted, leaving behind architectural skeletons that slowly sink into the sand. The remains of these cities form the dramatic core of Karo’s multi-channel work. Also central to the exhibition are the narrator’s field reports, which reflect on the traces and remnants of an indefinite future recorded by the desert.
Against this historical background, the desert emerges in the work as a distinctive visual actor, a kind of silent witness. Above all, the traces recorded by the desert show that, contrary to the Eurocentric colonialist mindset, the desert is not a haven of emptiness, but rather a complex, resilient and adaptable zone where different ways of life, habitats, spaces, times and cultures have met. It is also a touchstone where the consequences of fossil capitalism and the global extractive industries are harshly felt. For Karo, the desert also becomes a mirror that looks at possible futures on a planetary scale.
In Karo’s exhibition, the Photo North galleries are transformed into a kaleidoscopic cinematic whole, each room offering a different perspective on the traces we leave on the surface of the planet. In addition to video projections, the exhibition features photographic works, objects, and rock materials. Combining archaeological, geological and paleontological perspectives, the question of how we can learn to live so that life on Earth continues into the future echoes in the background.
Marko Karo
Mirage
1.2.–30.3.2025
Photo North – Nordic Photographic Centre, gallery
Sources:
Osuna, Celina, Tynan Aidan (eds.). Storied Deserts – Reimagining Global Arid Lands. Routledge, New York, 2024.
Parikka, Jussi. A Geology of Media. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
Tynan, Aidan. The Desert in Modern Literature and Philosophy – Wastelands Aesthetics. Edinburgh University Press, 2010.