"Guilty pleasure"
"Guilty pleasure" examines the temperature of vanity in our time. The introverted gaze is tuned to questions about what it takes to become the best version of oneself? How should I look? What makes me appear attractive? What does it take for me to become more successful?
The result has been a permanent individualization where attention is focused on appearance and body and where market forces are more than happy to contribute. All this at the expense of an outward-looking view towards the future and the community.
It is not difficult to describe vanity from a moral point of view, but is there also something mitigating to say about this driving force? What would we be without vanity? Would the aesthetics of the head exist?
"She had such a nice laundry"
When it comes to the natural forces on Lista, one could say that the wind plays one of the main roles.
The installation thematizes the interface between nature and culture, where the wind is tasked with completing the work, originating in local housewife tradition.
The starting point is conversations I overheard as a child, where female relatives and neighbors were judged by the way the laundry was hung up. Against this perfection is set the forces of nature, which at any moment can throw everything out of whack.
I have previously worked extensively with textiles, fur, bone, plastic and painting, mainly focusing on the consumer culture that has characterized society.
The installation was made in 2021. It has been continued in 2022 to a new indoor installation and has been titled "Etterklang".
Oktober 2021
Habitat 2022
The exhibition shows artworks by Norwegian and Danish artists who in different ways treat notions of what a habitat is in poetic, meditative, critical, humorous and bodily ways. The exhibition is the first in Agder Kunstsenter's history to spotlight sustainability in both material use, production and themes. The artists have been challenged to work with materials, and to facilitate work processes, that are sustainable.
HABITAT 2022 is divided into three parts: an exhibition in the gallery at Agder Kunstsenter, an outdoor exhibition outside Kunstpunkt Lista in the middle of Lista's unique nature, and performative works in public space in Kristiansand city.
"Reconstruction Attempts IV"
is my contribution to the exhibition
It is part of a project that takes its starting point in an abrupt landscape where history has been lost, where only fragments of a past world exist, without explanations, instructions or descriptions. History can only be recreated through the reassembly of the fragments that exist.
The materials I use in this project are mostly skeletal parts from various animals collected along the coast of Lista. For assembly I use nylon rope and metal. The contrast between the natural material and the synthetic emphasizes the intervention in nature.
