The space of friction: the environmental uncanny in the works of Munk, Isolotto, and de Bruyckere

Traditionally a psychoanalytic concept, the uncanny is increasingly used to describe how the familiar boundaries between things seem to dissolve in the Anthropocene. Through an analysis of the three artworks Marie Munk’s Big Energy, Uffe Isolotto’s We Walked the Earth, and Berlinde de Bruyckere’s K36 (The Black Horse), this study engages in a philosophical and artistic discussion on how art can contribute to ecological reorientation. By employing the uncanny as a critical strategy, the article examines how these artworks contest and embody notions of human-centred exceptionalism. It suggests that the uncanny can provoke an unsettling recognition of a contradictory relationship with nature, opening the possibility of acknowledging and confronting ecological degradation beyond the gallery space.