In the east wing of Viborg Kunsthal, Jasmin Werner presents her solo exhibition Scarecrow Tactics. An immersive installation on migration, borders, and the often invisible mechanisms that regulate movement, access, and deterrence in contemporary society.
Drawing on the agricultural landscape of the Viborg region, Werner works with the scarecrow as a central motif and conceptual anchor. The figure operates as a presence through signalling and deterrence rather than direct action, pointing to how control can be exercised indirectly and preventively.
In a European context where migration politics is shaped by temporariness, bureaucracy and demands for self-sufficiency, the installation examines how insecurity itself can function as a mechanism of governance. These structures are translated into an exhibition space where social and political dynamics become physically present.
As part of the exhibition, Werner has conducted workshops in which participants across generations, experiences and backgrounds have collaboratively created scarecrows. These are included in the exhibition as sculptural figures that reveals the often invisible systems of rules and social codes shaping movement, behavior, and belonging.
The installation includes a sound piece by Bradley Davies, based on acoustic deterrent systems from agriculture. The work adds an auditory dimension that reinforces the spatial and bodily experience. This is further intensified by The Net (2016), a green construction safety net that structures and regulates movement through the exhibition space.
Among the figurative constellations, the installation includes enlarged casts of seeds from plants dispersed by wind, animals, and human activity. Over time, these plants have become part of the Northern European landscape through cross-border movements such as trade and agriculture. In relation to the scarecrows, they point to the tension between ecological processes shaped by movement and human efforts to control and regulate mobility.
Scarecrow Tactics questions what we perceive as native. It points to the fact that such categories are neither fixed nor natural, but historically shaped and constantly changing. The distinction between the desired and the undesired emerges as the result of cultural and political processes and negotiation.
The German-Filipino artist Jasmin Werner is based in Berlin and Hamburg. She studied at HfG Karlsruhe, the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and the Städelschule (Hochschule für Bildende Künste), Frankfurt am Main. Her works has previously been shown internationally at museums, art institutions, and galleries in Germany and Denmark. Werner examines architectures of power and objects of status, tracing transnational movement through interventions in spaces of production and consumption.
