Maren Dagny Juell

Maren Dagny Juell works with Virtual Reality (VR), moving images, sculpture, and installation. With absurdity and humor, the works deal with new technology and language, focusing on human adaptability and agency. The artist constructs scenarios and narratives borrowed from sci-fi literature, computer games, and online informational videos. These instructions are used as a disseminator of knowledge for optimisation, especially chances of survival, mental health, and physical fitness. Maren is concerned with the object’s plasticity and interaction with our presence as a placeholder for meaning. She investigates embodiment in VR and installations by inviting the viewer to experience how the sensory apparatus can be effective in a virtual and physical space simultaneously. This is used as an analogy for how the body is incorporated into economic power structures through language that praises flexibility and progression by activating the instructions as part of the work. The body’s fragility and the inclusion of hardware and tech are often included as an essential part of the work.

Maren Dagny Juell, Monument For A Sim Inventory. What. We. Bring. Home, 2023
digital sketch collage
courtesy of the artist