But what if the dream does not hold water? What if escaping the noise of the big city and choosing ‘natural living’ fails to live up to what we see on film? What if all our neuroses, anxieties and inadequacies fail to evaporate once we throw on an Icelandic sweater and head into the woods?

The story of the artist withdrawing to commune with nature to find divine inspiration or their inner voice is a familiar theme – from Thoreau’s classical Walden on his retreat to the untouched nature of the US, to the name of one of the oldest art museums in the world, the State Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, referencing the myth of art best being contemplated in splendid isolation. Since graduating from the Funen Art Academy, Anna Bak has dedicated her art practice to investigating the myths and paradoxes spun by the encounter between the artist and isolation in the wilderness, and the destinies associated with that encounter. In previous works she has explored how both botanists and amateur scientists were ridiculed or ostracised during their own lifetime, as well as investigated the political – and potentially lethal – sides of escaping into nature to prepare for doomsday in ‘prepper’ culture, or the iconic example of the Unabomber sending letter bombs to the heart of civilisation from his self-imposed exile deep in the woods.

In Hermit, Anna Bak’s first major solo exhibition in Copenhagen, the artist documents and processes a radical experiment from the summer of 2018, when she moved into the Swedish wilderness for a month without any contact with the outside world. She spent the month investigating the psychological impact of the isolation, routine, boredom and her contact with nature, producing a series of drawings, prints and sculptures as well as a video, all of which can now be seen at Overgaden. Many of the works focus on the passage of time and repetition, as in a series of clay mountains – one for each day of the experiment – and 30 self-portraits that register changes in the artist’s state of mind during her time in the wilderness.