photograph courtesy atlanta botanical garden
Rosa Sunfinger, the soft-spoken introverted troll, cares for plants with her life-giving fingers.
On February 1st, a band of young trolls arrived at Memphis Botanic Garden. How they got there, no one knows, but they’re here to save the humans as part of a secret pact. So the story goes — or at least the story according to Thomas Dambo, the artist behind the larger-than-life creatures — Ronja Redeye, Rosa Sunfinger, Kamma Can, Sofus Lotus, Ibbi Pip, and Basse Buller — who have taken residence at the garden as part of the “Thomas Dambo’s TROLLS: Save the Humans” seasonal exhibition, on display through May 21st.
photograph courtesy atlanta botanical garden
Standing in front of Rosa Sunfinger is the creator of all these trolls, Thomas Dambo.
Made of reclaimed wood and other found materials, Dambo’s trolls are scattered across the world, some in permanent installations. The one closest to Memphis is Leo the Enlightened at the Blackberry Mountain Resort in Walland, Tennessee.
Dambo has been creating giant trolls since 2014, and in 2023 he made his 100th. Growing up in Denmark, his parents, a bicycle smith and a teacher/seamstress, instilled in him a passion for recycling and upcycling, so he and his brother fashioned their own toys, costumes, and tree houses out of whatever they could find. As he grew older, he turned his creativity to street art and graffiti, beatboxing, hip-hop, and eventually the large-scale installations that would catapult him to international fame, all while retaining his passion for sustainability, as he would use only recycled and found materials.
The trolls especially fall into that mission, says Gina Harris, Memphis Botanic Garden’s director of education and events. “They are sharing information on how to live more lightly on our Earth,” she says, “which is part of the Botanic Garden’s mission as well — being good stewards of our environment.”
photograph courtesy atlanta botanical garden
This will be the fifth traveling outdoor exhibit the garden has hosted, the first being David Rogers’ “Big Bugs” in 2017 and the most recent being Kristine Mays’ “Rich Soil.” As Harris explains, these exhibits are meant to attract new audiences and to keep the displays fresh for current members. When Dambo unveiled his traveling exhibition of trolls at the Morton Arboretum just outside Chicago in 2018, that garden experienced two of its highest-attendance years in its nearly 100-year history.
photograph courtesy atlanta botanical garden
Ibbi Pip communicates with humans through colorful birdhouses.
For the trolls’ stay in Memphis, Harris says, “We’re pulling from this full story and folklore of these trolls into everything that we’re doing at the garden.” That means the full Botanic Garden team is learning the fairytale behind each of the trolls’ characters, their personalities, and their stories. The staff is also getting specialized name tags with “trollvish” alphabet characters and troll flags.
“Any of the events that we’ll have going on will be connected somehow to the trolls exhibit,” Harris adds. That includes tram tours that’ll take guests to see the trolls throughout the gardens, Troll Stroll Saturdays, a Troll Garden Party for adults, art classes, and much more.
At the Troll Fest on April 5th, for instance, the garden will showcase their community partners that line up with the trolls’ mission of sustainably, like Clean Memphis, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Protect Our Aquifer, the Binghampton Development Corporation, and the Tennessee Native Plant Society. Harris says, “We’re partnering with all of these different community organizations and sharing with our community ways that you can then get involved, so when you see the trolls, you don’t forget everything you learned.”
photograph courtesy atlanta botanical garden
A wild child at heart, Basse Buller expresses himself through symbols and shapes, leaving his mark on anything he can find.
Even the Memphis Botanic Garden staff has already learned from the trolls. For Dambo’s process, Harris says, “Everything has to be done using sustainable materials, recycled if possible, even down to the signs that are made, so it’s really making us look a little bit closer at the way we do things, too, especially with our office supplies.”
With that in mind, the team recently toured the Republic Services facility, the city’s waste management center, to see how items are recycled in Memphis. “When we’re doing these things and giving out information,” she says, “we’re not just telling you things that we’ve looked up online.”
Harris hopes Dambo’s trolls function as a similar call to action. “It’s another opportunity for kids and adults to look at things kind of in a different way,” she says. “We all see these things lying around, but to look at this and think, ‘Oh my gosh, that was built out of recycled pallets,’ I’m hoping that gives people an opportunity to do something different and to creative.”
“Thomas Dambo’s TROLLS: Save the Humans,” presented by International Paper, is on display at Memphis Botanic Garden February 1st through May 21st. For more information, including program scheduling and troll profiles, visit membg.org/trolls.
