Biofore-Magazine-2021

58

FEATURE

59

Recycle activist Thomas Dambo plots the creation of another troll.

So far, Dambo has created 81 trolls across seven countries.

“Wood is the best material we have to build things from in the world. It just comes right out of the ground.”

Another masterpiece begins to take shape.

I n the courtyard of his studio outside Copenhagen, Thomas Dambo is trying to decide how the trolls will deal with the havoc humanity is wreaking on the earth. “Every 211 years, the trolls have a big meeting where they talk about the state of mankind because they know that many times throughout history, people have endangered the life of the animals and the planet,”Dambo says. “Nowmankind is out of line again. But what should they do?” The troll meeting, called the Troldefolkefest, is the subject of an upcoming installation by Dambo, an artist who makes giant sculptures out of scrapmaterials. It’s a way, he says, to showboth the scope of the world’s trash problemand its possibilities. Making something out of nothing Dambo calls himself a recycle activist, and his ability to find new uses for discarded or rejected materials isn’t only visible in his art. The furniture and fixtures in his home and office space also are repurposed from leftover pieces of wood and other spare parts. The decision to work exclusively in scrap materials is a reflec tion of both Dambo’s values and his personality.

The trolls, which are constructed from small pieces of wood and only need simple tools to put together, allows him to engage as many people as possible in the creation process. Each project involves dozens of volunteers who help assemble the troll. Choosing trolls as a subject also allows Dambo to maximise the materials he has to work with. “I’m not building Justin Bieber every

panels that used to hang on the walls of the Copenhagen metro. He thinks they would make an interesting pattern for the siding on his new studio space. His trolls are made from leftover shipping pallets or pieces of timber that can’t be sold because they are damaged or imperfect. Whilehewillworkwithanymaterial,Dambosayshepreferswood. “Wood is the best material we have to build things from in the world,” he says. “It just comes right out of the ground. It doesn’t pollute anything, it’s not toxic toworkwith, andwhen it decays it provides more nutrients. It’s an amazingmaterial like that.” Trolling for compliments Dambo didn’t set out to create a community of trolls to help show humans the way to amore sustainable future, but from the beginning, the project has emphasised how trash can be used to create something exciting. “The first couple of ones that I did, I didn’t really call them trolls at that point,” Dambo says. “For me, they were just these big, recycled beings that had their own stories and their own life, but then people wanted to call them something and that ended up being trolls.”

“My parents, they brought me up to be a good citizen of the world and try and think about not only myself and my dreams, but also the greater perspective of the world and that you should try and be resourceful,” Dambo says. But then, he adds, “I was also very impatient.” Dambo says that as a child, the very worst thing for him was not being able to immediately act on his ideas. If he wanted to build a fortress for his action figures, for example, he wanted to do it instantly rather than wait for his mother to take him to the store to buymaterials, so he scavenged around for whatever ma terials were available. “Later, when I had the money to actually buy materials, I learned that it didn’t make for better design,” he says. “And I just realised that there are amillionways of designing anything. Why is it that you need to go and buy something specific to do it?” Finding the best material for the job Dambo generally decides what he wants to create and then goes out to find the materials to do it, but sometimes it works the other way around. As his fame has increased, scrap materials tend to find their way to him. He acquired a bunch of advertising

day, so people can’t come and say, ‘It doesn’t look like him.’ It’s a troll. I decide what it looks like. I can give it five arms if I want to do that, or one eye or whatever. If the one arm is longer than the other one because I was able to find a long enough construction beam to put inside it, that doesn’t matter,” he says. So far, Dambo has created 81 trolls in seven countries and eight US states, locating them mostly in out-of-the-way places that require a little effort to find. He’s currentlyworking onnum ber 82. Hewants to use themas away to get people to experience nature in a different way. “The way I play with the relationship between nature and art