Minnebrieven (Love Letters)

Minnebrieven (Love Letters) is a threescreen video installation filmed by Chloë Delanghe across Japan during a residency. It draws on the 1977 essay “Why look at animals?” by English art critic John Berger (1926-2017), in which he analysed the alienation of humans and animals as a consequence of 19th-century capitalism. Delanghe uses Berger’s text as a frame of reference for thinking about animals and our relationship to looking. The resulting images explore the agency of the camera but also emotions such as solitude and displacement through the artist’s cautious encounters with pigeons, ravens and deer. The work also acts as a missive home to her family, and complicates the idea of love only being read in romantic terms.