Ida Ekblad MarIus Engh anawana haloba lars lauMann - Statoil

Ida Ekblad 

MarIus Engh 

anawana haloba 

lars lauMann 

sTaToIl 

arT award 

2009

conTEnTs

Editors 

Jens R Jenssen 

Bjarne Våga 

In search of the heroes of tomorrow 8 

by Jens R Jenssen 

A word from the Jury 9 

by Olav Christopher Jenssen 

Ida Ekblad 13 

Ida Ekblad, or for the new year 

by David Lewis 

Marius Engh 51 

Devils, werewolves and other myths 

by Stefania Palumbo 

Anawana Haloba 89 

The ritual when things fall apart: 

Dissolution and resolution 

within the works of Anawana Haloba 

by Marta Kuzma 

Lars Laumann 127 

Lars Laumann 

by Katherine Waugh 

Curricula vitae 166 

The jury 172 

The designer and the writers 176 

Facts and figures 178 

Acknowledgements 181

IN SEARCH OF 

THE HEROES 

OF TOMORROW 

It’s a great honour and pleasure to present the four nominated 

artists – Ida Ekblad, Anawana Haloba, Lars Laumann, and 

Marius Engh – for the Statoil art award 2009. They represent 

different approaches and perspectives, exhibiting a unique 

creative energy that is difficult to match. They have produced 

artworks that provide unique opportunities for joy, provocation, 

beauty, learning – and self-insight; but only if you are open, 

curious, and willing to learn. Although only one of the nominees 

will receive the award, we will follow the development of the other 

three with keen interest as well. They are all high-calibre talents. 

We would also like to commend the art award jury, 

Olav Christopher Jenssen (chair of the jury) and jury members 

Solveig Øvstebø, Caroline M Ugelstad, Göran Christenson, and 

Øystein Ustvedt, for their commitment and discretion. Their 

wide range of experience and expertise ensures that they will 

reach a well-informed, discerning decision. 

8 

The fundamental idea of the Statoil art award is to give talented 

young artists living and working in Norway, and Norwegian 

artists working abroad, an additional incentive to develop their 

artistic talent in the direction they feel is right. The award is 

part of our programme “Heroes of Tomorrow”, which encourages 

talented young people in different disciplines. 

The award is also an integral part of the Statoil art programme, 

along with four other elements: the collection, the exhibitions, 

learning and communication. Our commitment to art allows us 

to make a sustainable contribution to the cultural development 

of the communities in which we operate, and build our corporate 

culture and profile. But most important of all: art awakens 

creativity and inspiration – it brings people together and into 

conversation with each other. 

On behalf of the people who have made the 2009 award 

possible, let me welcome you to the Statoil art award 2009. 

We are confident that you will enjoy – and be challenged by 

– the journey! 


Senior vice president 

human resources 

Leader of the Statoil art programme 

Statoil ASA

A WORD FROM THE JURY 

As chair it is my great pleasure on behalf of the jury to present 

the four worthy nominees for the Statoil art award 2009: 

Ida Ekblad, Marius Engh, Anawana Haloba and Lars Laumann. 

During the course of our deliberations this spring we met 

three times in Berlin and once in Oslo. As we each brought 

five artists to the table, we started with a longlist of 25. Our 

objective was to agree on four nominees, which proved to be a 

challenging task. Not only did we have to agree on what to look 

for; there is also a wealth of outstanding talent to choose from 

– which bodes well for the Norwegian art scene in the years to 

come. We were quite surprised to learn that we had come up 

with 25 different names independently of each other! 

That said, we wish to emphasise that our decision was reached 

by consensus and not by a vote. 

The four nominees were chosen on the grounds of their 

merits and their artistic promise. All of them sport restless, 

international résumés to go with their skills and ability 

– a testament to a driven and enthusiastic spirit. 

At Kunstnerforbundet Gallery for Contemporary Art they have 

produced an exhibition of diverse thematic concerns, showcasing 

four very different artistic strategies. Their artworks are original, 

strong, and well executed. It will indeed be challenging to single 

out a winner among four so deserving candidates. 

On this occasion I want to express my thanks to the other 

members of the jury, Solveig Øvstebø, Caroline Ugelstad, 

Øystein Ustvedt and Göran Christenson, for their stimulating 

and dedicated commitment throughout this process. I would 

also like to point out that the entire process has been very well 

coordinated by Bjarne Våga, the patient secretary to the jury. 

Embarking on the journey of a life as an artist is a bold move. 

It takes enthusiasm, patience, practice and plenty of hard work 

to succeed. Constant re-evaluation and an open mind are just 

as important as perseverance. Accomplishments that expose 

problems are often as valuable as successes, or even more so. 

This is a road less travelled by, for a reason – but these four all 

have what it takes. 

Olav ChRistOpheR Jenssen 

Chair of the jury 

Statoil art award 2009 

9

ThE noMInEEs 

11

IDA EKBLAD, 

OR FOR THE NEW YEAR 

One and the same civilisation simultaneously 

produces two wholly different traditions of 

art, or more exactly two conflicting modes 

of appreciation and understanding. The first 

tradition is the negative one. Negative is meant 

here is a purely technical sense: negativity 

means rebellion, criticism, boldness and 

innovation, revolution, rejection of authority 

and tradition, and, ultimately, freedom. 

Negative refers to that initial, amazing cry of 

“no!” that has served as the engine for modern 

and now contemporary art. It is impossible to 

imagine the culture of modernity without this 

urge to reject and destroy. As Picasso so aptly 

expressed it: 

Painting is not made to decorate apartments. 

It is an instrument for offensive and defensive 

war against the enemy. 

There is, however, another tradition: 

the affirmative one. It begins with an entirely 

different set of assumptions. Rather than locate 

a target – authority, capitalism, tradition, 

or the law of the father – in order to negate 

or dismantle it, the inception is reverence for 

the endless, indescribable flux of all things. 

This approach generates both problems and 

paradoxes. The task of idol-smashing cannot 

be taken too seriously when it is known from 

the outset that everything, even gods and 

idols, will soon disappear. “Soon you will be 

forgotten,” Aurelius wrote, “soon all things will 

have forgotten you.” Measured against eternity, 

nothing seems to have much meaning. 

How, then, to create? On what grounds is one to 

make decisions, or function at all? The challenge, 

from this perspective, is to wrest something 

meaningful from the chaos of sensation. And 

if the negative tradition places hope in the 

future (i.e., criticism will lead to a better world, 

or a better self), the affirmative tradition tends 

instead to seek a pure present, because it is only 

in the present that anything is present at all; the 

future, as Stephen Dedalus mused unhappily, is 

only the past seen in a dream. 

Ida Ekblad belongs to this second tradition. 

Her work matters not because of any 

refinements of temperament and technique 

(although these are there too, in abundance)

IDA EKBLAD, 

OR FOR THE NEW YEAR 

One and the same civilisation simultaneously 

produces two wholly different traditions of 

art, or more exactly two conflicting modes 

of appreciation and understanding. The first 

tradition is the negative one. Negative is meant 

here is a purely technical sense: negativity 

means rebellion, criticism, boldness and 

innovation, revolution, rejection of authority 

and tradition, and, ultimately, freedom. 

Negative refers to that initial, amazing cry of 

“no!” that has served as the engine for modern 

and now contemporary art. It is impossible to 

imagine the culture of modernity without this 

urge to reject and destroy. As Picasso so aptly 

expressed it: 

Painting is not made to decorate apartments. 

It is an instrument for offensive and defensive 

war against the enemy. 

There is, however, another tradition: 

the affirmative one. It begins with an entirely 

different set of assumptions. Rather than locate 

a target – authority, capitalism, tradition, 

or the law of the father – in order to negate 

or dismantle it, the inception is reverence for 

the endless, indescribable flux of all things. 

This approach generates both problems and 

paradoxes. The task of idol-smashing cannot 

be taken too seriously when it is known from 

the outset that everything, even gods and 

idols, will soon disappear. “Soon you will be 

forgotten,” Aurelius wrote, “soon all things will 

have forgotten you.” Measured against eternity, 

nothing seems to have much meaning. 

How, then, to create? On what grounds is one to 

make decisions, or function at all? The challenge, 

from this perspective, is to wrest something 

meaningful from the chaos of sensation. And 

if the negative tradition places hope in the 

future (i.e., criticism will lead to a better world, 

or a better self), the affirmative tradition tends 

instead to seek a pure present, because it is only 

in the present that anything is present at all; the 

future, as Stephen Dedalus mused unhappily, is 

only the past seen in a dream. 

Ida Ekblad belongs to this second tradition. 

Her work matters not because of any 

refinements of temperament and technique 

(although these are there too, in abundance) 

21

ut rather because it takes up the challenge of saying yes to 

the world. Now, to those familiar with the arc of Ekblad’s career, 

this argument might seem strange. After all, until rather recently 

her practice was predicated in an almost textbook fashion on 

negation, as exemplified by Political Song for Jessica Simpson to 

Sing (2008). The artist began with an image of Jessica Simpson 

from the cover of the July 2005 GQ magazine, where Jessica is 

wearing a stars-and-stripes bikini and unbuttoned combat pants 

and smiling as she gives the v-for-victory sign. This was just after 

the re-election of George Bush and at the height of the Iraq war. 

In a moment of disgust, Ekblad took the gum she was chewing 

and shoved it into Jessica’s eye, attacking the image and the 

values it embodies. A similar sardonic, critical perspective can be 

seen in many of her works until very recently; consider, as further 

examples, the images of Eazy-E (Kings Die Too, 2008) and 

basketball sneakers and myths (Air Jordan #1 and #2, both 2008), 

as well as the wry Cultural Diversity (2008) – an attack on the 

woozy, feel-good logic of globalisation and political correctness. 

However, beginning with her solo show in April at Gaudel de 

Stampa in Paris and continuing in recent exhibitions, 

Ekblad shows a very different face. A visitor to Febermalerier 

in Paris, France, or to What Leaf? What Mushroom? at New 

Jerseyy in Basel, Switzerland, might have supposed that this was 

another artist entirely. In Paris, she presented densely knotted, 

heavily textured, oil paintings and similarly expressionist 

welded sculptures. At New Jerseyy, she painted only the gallery 

windows; instead of remixing images from American consumer 

22 

culture, she chose instead to dramatise mainly the light; as day 

turned into night the warm glow of daylight streaming through 

the windows converted gradually into a frosty, high-key glare. 

Any critical aspect – any obvious act of negation – seems to 

have disappeared. This change is emphasised by a shift not only 

in the works themselves but also in the discursive frame: the 

title of the Basel show, for example, came from a translation of 

a haiku by John Cage, who insisted that everything is beautiful if 

only the viewer is willing to open her ears and eyes. 

By moving from a practice of critical appropriation to an 

art that attempts to assert its own vitality often using oldfashioned, 

traditionally “heroic” means, Ekblad traces a crucial 

pattern: she crosses from negation to affirmation; she crosses 

beyond negation. This is the basic pattern followed by virtually 

all artists in the affirmative tradition, regardless of their medium 

or mode. Except for a handful of saints, everyone has to begin 

with rejection. The cry of “no!” will always be fundamental to any 

sensitive or thoughtful person, to anyone aware of the world. 

The best modern example of this pattern is to be found in the 

life of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche began his career with a 

desperate search for authentic, or Dionysian, reality; unable 

to find it in Wagner and Wagnerism, he entered a critical, 

deconstructive, nihilistic phase, which ended suddenly, almost 

magically, in the fourth book of The Gay Science, 1882. 

In writing that book, Nietzsche moved beyond his role as brilliant 

and merciless critic to became the strongest champion of 

existence as it is – so much so that he insisted that the greatest

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 

trans. Josefine Nauckhoff, 

ed. Bernard Williams (Cambridge, 

Cambridge University Press, 2001), 157. 

of all gifts would be to live one’s life an infinite 

number of times, each one being exactly the 

same. And with that, negation was left only as 

a tool, never a motive: 

I’m still alive; I still think: I must still be alive 

because I still have to think. Sum, ergo cogito: 

cogito, ergo sum. Today everyone allows 

himself to express his dearest wish and 

thoughts: so I, too, want to say what I wish 

from myself today and what thought first 

crossed my heart – what thought shall be the 

reason, warrant, and sweetness of the rest of 

my life! I want to learn more and more how 

to see what is necessary in things as what is 

beautiful in them – thus I will be one of those 

who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that 

be my love from now on! I do not want to wage 

war against ugliness. I do not want to accuse; 

I do not want to accuse even the accusers. 

Let looking away be my only negation! And, all 

in all and on the whole: some day I want only 

to be a Yes-sayer! 1 

The artist passes through negation, and then 

beyond. In all likelihood, the more virulent 

the rejection and the cry of hate, the more 

rousing will be the roar of acceptance. It was 

only because Nietzsche had been such a 

total nihilist (the first perfect nihilist in all of 

Europe, he claimed) that he was able to pass 

through nihilism to the yes that waits on the 

other side. Of course, in many senses nothing 

changes. The facts of existence remain the 

same. Their meaning changes profoundly, 

though. Suddenly they are arranged in new 

patterns, and to new ends. Return, for instance, 

to Political Song for Jessica Simpson to Sing, 

2006. Its elements are as follows: a found 

object, an overtly physical gesture (warm, wet 

gum from mouth to eye) in order to enact a 

transformation, and a title derived from a song 

(the Minutemen’s Political Song for Michael 

Jackson to Sing). Now consider the paintings 

and sculptures that Ekblad has shown recently, 

whether at Gaudel de Stampa in Paris or at 

Karma International in Zurich; Lucy in the Sky 

with Diamonds (2009), for instance, uses 

found materials (the iron), overtly physical 

gestures (welding), and a title derived from a 

song. The elements are, essentially, the same. 

What has changed is their arrangement and 

purpose. In Political Song for Jessica Simpson 

to Sing, everything is subordinated to negation. 

23

The physicality (the gum from the artist’s mouth) reads mainly 

as an index of contempt; it is a tool, or a sign – an arrow 

pointing to the catastrophe of an America that appeared, for 

the moment, to proudly, even pornographically, celebrate its 

most base and regressive elements. In Ekblad’s more recent 

work, the focus is on the elements for their own sake, without 

there being much of a goal, hierarchy, or direction. More and 

more it is the process that is emphasised. Recently, the artist 

has been making sculptures by drifting through different cities, 

sometimes with friends, wheeling around a trolley filled with 

cases of wet concrete. During these perambulations, the artist 

finds, in her own words, “tools and bits and things” and sticks 

them in the concrete; when it dries, the cases are discarded and 

the sculpture is revealed. 

The affirmative tradition has often been a musical one, or 

rather has looked to music as a model of a self-justifying art: 

Cage was of course a composer, and Nietzsche’s early reverence 

for Wagner, as well as his evocation of Dionysus as the emblem 

of the fullest, purest reality, are both well known. Moreover, 

mystics of all kinds have often said that sound is ideal as a tool 

for meditation, because a sound cannot really be heard after 

it has passed, but only in the present. It is not surprising to 

find Ekblad calling upon these same energies. Usually she does 

this through titles, whether copied directly (Lucy in the Sky 

with Diamonds) or, more frequently, as a fragment or variation 

(Political Song for Jessica Simpson to Sing). Crucially, though, 

the title is often taken from a song that Ekblad was listening 

to in her studio while working on that piece: it thus refers back 

to the moment of creation. Obviously, this moment belongs 

to Ekblad alone. But the recurring song titles, like some of the 

painterly gestures, are indicative of the need to share that 

immediacy, to share the moment of exultation, when artist, like 

audience, becomes merely a vessel through which energy, 

which is beauty, flows. 

When language approaches music, when it is closest to song, 

it is called poetry. Ekblad is, of course, also a poet. She writes 

the way she sculpts: by combining and transforming found 

elements, whatever they may be, and wherever she finds them 

(and one does not have to search very hard for words). As in her 

sculptures, she is fond of using local elements: French phrases 

for a poem in Paris, for instance. Moreover, her poetry forms 

a map of her sensibility; much of what we have been trying to 

say here on her behalf, and on behalf of tradition she inherits, is 

written in her poems for all to see. There is total receptivity to 

the flow of forces, and especially to sound, for instance, in Fare- 

Ye-Well: “The chimes of bells she faintly hears/be all ears – Be 

ALL ears.” And in O’ Radical Modern Way Of Life there is a list 

of sculptural materials, and again attention to the specifics of 

the particular moment: “knickknack, bric-a-brac, neglected metal 

sheet/– A Radical Punch, brewed on a wee lil’ Credit Crunch.” 

There is a final parallel to be made with the great paragon 

of the affirmative tradition. Nietzsche took the title The Gay 

Science from the Provençal term “La gaya scienza” – the term 

that troubadours used in the Middle Ages to refer to their art, 

the art of poetry; it was this creative power, which was at the 

same time a concrete science of affirmation – this specific 

unity of “singer, knight, and free spirit” – that he looked to for 

guidance, like a star. Crossing from negation to affirmation is 

merely the beginning, and in itself it is no guarantee. But poetry, 

whatever poetry is today, or still means (it is not a force or 

metaphor like any other, since it encompasses every metaphor, 

every force) is there to point the way. 

DaviD lewis 

25

Lucy in the Sky 

with Diamonds 

Welded iron, concrete 

256 x 92 x 24 cm 

2009

Political Song for 

Jessica Simpson to Sing 

Chewing gum on screenprint 

175 x 120 cm 

2007

Air Jordan #2 

C-print and silver gelatin print, framed 

220 x 80 cm 

2008

If You Give To Me 

Oil on linen 

200 x 160 cm 

2009

FARE-YE-WELL 

Extracted from the strong smelling asphalt froth 

A deep red female scale insect 

The lips of her ship is moldy 

The dosh in her pocket is gone 

Since roving`s been her ruin 

The stairs are sleep inducing 

Way, hay up, steady she goes 

The chimes of bells she faintly hears 

Be all ears 

Be ALL ears 

Then cast her mind in the stream 

with fusticwood shavings and soot colored tears 

Kut-kut-kut! 

hissed the vacuum 

Beep beep! 

purred the dusty chimes of chrome 

Oh poor old horse is buried in sand 

All dat done, 

has drifted from land! 

© Ida Ekblad, 2009 

Ho, yes, ho! 

Oh aye, oh!

The Gold Bug Drift (nYc), 

Rockaway Beach, Bed 

Concrete and found objects 

280 x 79 x 91 cm 

2009

Installation view: Silver Ruins, 2009 

Fotogalleriet, Oslo, Norway 

(from the left) 

Untitled M 

Ink and chlorin on paper 

212 x 310 cm 

2008 

O.G. 

Laquer, ladder, t-shirt 

240 x 40 x 10 cm 

2008 

Air Jordan #1 

Lightjet print, silver-gelatin print 

140 x 100 cm 

Silver Ruins #1 

Airbrush, marker, spray-paint 

200 x 130 cm 

2008

Tyrian Purple 

Oil on linen 

200 x 160 cm 

2009


Rockaway Beach, Bruce 


84 x 56 x 25 cm 

2009


Navy Yard, Connecticut 


119 x 51 x 33 cm 

2009

The Gold Bug 

Drift (nYc), 

Navy Yard, Plate 


135 x 53 x 51 cm 

2009

A Woman Under the Influence 

Installation view: Frieze Art Fair, 2009, London, UK 

Courtesy of Gaudel de Stampa, Paris, France

The Gold Bug Drift 

(Clapham Common), 

Where You Might Be 


Dimensions variable 

2009

The Gold Bug Drift 


Tomorrow 



2009

The Chief of Police 

Oil on linen 

119 x 94 cm 

2009

Installation view: (from the left) 

A Flytrap and A Pettle, If You Give To Me, Superlungs and The Bishop (I Think of Demons) 

Europäisch-Amerikanische Freundschaft, 2009 

Gavin Browns Enterprise, New York City, NY, USA 

Superlungs 

Welded found iron 

127 x 76 x 114 cm 

2009 

The Bishop 

(I Think of Demons) 


160 x 119 x 25 cm 

2009

A Flytrap and A Pettle 

Oil on linen 

200 x 160 cm 

2009

Royal Festival Hall 


150 x 109 x 30 cm 

2009

The Gold Bug 

Drift (nYc), 

Navy Yard, 

Flower 


94 x 53 x 51 cm 

2009 


Rockaway Beach, Bottle 


160 x 102 x 43 cm 

2009

Francis 

Oil on linen 

200 x 160 cm 

2009

What Leaf, 

What Mushroom? 

Installation view: New Jerseyy, Basel, Switzerland 

2009

DEVILS, WEREWOLVES 

AND OTHER MYTHS 

How can you explain – to a boy emotionally in love with his 

skateboard – the fascination of archaeology, the interest and 

passion in something ancient and archaic hidden under the 

dust (like the essential piece in a mosaic) which represents a 

slice of history? Curiously, the boy in love with slalom, downhill, 

freestyle and “ollies” may even become passionate about the 

mystery of digging up the past. In that event, you should just 

stand back and attentively watch the evolution of an articulate 

personality when driven by his unusual passions. 

The archaeology of form: the idea implied in the various 

objects around us; the time that gives places their spirit; the 

history that defines our course and destiny – these make up the 

concept of archaeology that Marius Engh reveals to us in his work. 

Engh uses two expressive media in particular to communicate 

his ideas: photography and sculpture. These two expressive 

channels summarise different stages in his research: Engh 

speaks to us about history, anthropology, modernism and social 

semiotics. We should imagine the artist as an expert on times 

past, seeking traces and details that manage to reconstruct a 

broader picture of complex human experience, moving among 

the signs that civilisation has left over time and the meanings 

given to objects and places throughout their history. 

Engh uses photography to provide an additional viewpoint 

to our customary visual exploration of the world around us. His 

different perspective makes it possible for us to discover folds 

in the cultural landscape that conceal the details needed to give 

observers pause for thought about their surroundings. 

The Lead, Follow or Get the Hell Out of the Way photographic 

series – 14 images depicting details of the Teufelsberg (Devil’s Hill) 

in suburban Berlin – focuses on fragments of a history charged 

with meanings of an almost excessive emotive impact. Engh’s 

interest focuses precisely on the capacity that Teufelsberg has 

had to accumulate historic significance by virtue of the various 

episodes directly involved in its creation. 

Teufelsberg is an artificial hill standing in a location intended 

for a grandiose project – the new Berlin Technical University – 

designed by the Third Reich’s foremost architect, Albert Speer. 

The project, however, saw the development of only one faculty 

in the entire complex that, according to the Nazi architect’s 

theory of the “value of ruins”, would retain its dignity as a 

monumental construction – leaving behind an indelible mark 

of its greatness – even after its destruction. At the end of the 

Second World War, various attempts were made to demolish 

this Nazi building – its foundation stone was laid by Adolf Hitler 

in 1937 – but, when this objective was not achieved, it was 

decided to bury it under the remains of the more than 80,000 

buildings in Berlin bombed by the Allies, thereby artificially 

creating one of the highest points in the city. As if this were not 

enough, during the Cold War the Americans decided to locate 

the NSA listening station on “Devil’s Hill”.

DEVILS, WEREWOLVES 

AND OTHER MYTHS 

How can you explain – to a boy emotionally in love with his 

skateboard – the fascination of archaeology, the interest and 

passion in something ancient and archaic hidden under the 

dust (like the essential piece in a mosaic) which represents a 

slice of history? Curiously, the boy in love with slalom, downhill, 

freestyle and “ollies” may even become passionate about the 

mystery of digging up the past. In that event, you should just 

stand back and attentively watch the evolution of an articulate 

personality when driven by his unusual passions. 

The archaeology of form: the idea implied in the various 

objects around us; the time that gives places their spirit; the 

history that defines our course and destiny – these make up the 

concept of archaeology that Marius Engh reveals to us in his work. 

Engh uses two expressive media in particular to communicate 

his ideas: photography and sculpture. These two expressive 

channels summarise different stages in his research: Engh 

speaks to us about history, anthropology, modernism and social 

semiotics. We should imagine the artist as an expert on times 

past, seeking traces and details that manage to reconstruct a 

broader picture of complex human experience, moving among 

the signs that civilisation has left over time and the meanings 

given to objects and places throughout their history. 

Engh uses photography to provide an additional viewpoint 

to our customary visual exploration of the world around us. His 

different perspective makes it possible for us to discover folds 

in the cultural landscape that conceal the details needed to give 

observers pause for thought about their surroundings. 

The Lead, Follow or Get the Hell Out of the Way photographic 

series – 14 images depicting details of the Teufelsberg (Devil’s Hill) 

in suburban Berlin – focuses on fragments of a history charged 

with meanings of an almost excessive emotive impact. Engh’s 

interest focuses precisely on the capacity that Teufelsberg has 

had to accumulate historic significance by virtue of the various 

episodes directly involved in its creation. 

Teufelsberg is an artificial hill standing in a location intended 

for a grandiose project – the new Berlin Technical University – 

designed by the Third Reich’s foremost architect, Albert Speer. 

The project, however, saw the development of only one faculty 

in the entire complex that, according to the Nazi architect’s 

theory of the “value of ruins”, would retain its dignity as a 

monumental construction – leaving behind an indelible mark 

of its greatness – even after its destruction. At the end of the 

Second World War, various attempts were made to demolish 

this Nazi building – its foundation stone was laid by Adolf Hitler 

in 1937 – but, when this objective was not achieved, it was 

decided to bury it under the remains of the more than 80,000 

buildings in Berlin bombed by the Allies, thereby artificially 

creating one of the highest points in the city. As if this were not 

enough, during the Cold War the Americans decided to locate 

the NSA listening station on “Devil’s Hill”. 

59

Over the years its state of abandon – which may be considered 

the exact opposite of the non-place concept of French 

anthropologist Marc Augè – suggested various new uses for the 

hill, including a hotel complex and meditation centre. 

Such a concentration of events, according to the artist, 

brings the very concept of ruin into discussion. The objects that 

belonged to this place and bore witness to its history are so 

charged with memory that they may be considered saturated 

and returned to nature, thereby absolving the last function left 

to them, as custodians of memory and a vehicle for healing. 

Photography, in Engh’s creative universe, is an investigative 

narrative form which the artist uses to relate time and history, 

keeping track in a single image of the different moments and 

different events that have characterised places and objects, 

enabling us to achieve a new perspective. Engh’s work, which 

inevitably becomes the protagonist of this narrative process, is 

seen in an archaeological perspective that tends to examine the 

various stratifications involved and their spirit. 

His art pushes far beyond a simple, albeit intense, 

documentation of the place and its scenarios towards a full grasp 

of the subjects of his quest. Engh does this by creating clones 

of the original, thereby establishing new points of view and new 

conceptions of the “things” that belong to reality and experience. 

This process of re-creation of what is real is an evident 

attempt to scan precisely the spirit and history that objects 

carry with them, as well as a simultaneous attempt to abstract 

them from their original context and exhibit them in fresh 

circumstances by seeking out their unexpressed potential. 

By reproducing objects taken from everyday life and highlighting 

some of their formal aspects, Engh achieves a transposition of 

the meaning of the chosen subject, managing to shift attention 

in a simple gesture from historical and “archaeological” detail to 

formal detail, assimilating these objects – even if in this stage 

of Engh’s artistic process it would be better to define them as 

forms – into artistic currents such as Minimalism. 

This mode leads the artist, through interpretation of the 

meanings and functions that objects have inherited over time, 

towards the attainment of their essential form. In this way, the 

object is stripped of all its acquired superstructures and we are 

left with the form itself, which provides us with an opportunity to 

60 

reflect on the systematic and standardised aspects of daily life. 

Observers thus find themselves faced by pure form that has 

lost the characteristic of giving or withholding information, to 

become an abstract concept and synthesis of itself. This opens 

up for a series of different and diversified interpretations that 

re-adapt the reality to which the object refers. 

The displacement that the artist manages to create between 

the initial input and the formal result is particularly evident in 

one of his latest shows: Lycanthropic Chamber. The monster 

(the werewolf referred to in the title) seems to have completely 

disappeared from the scene, leaving hardly a trace. The works 

on show seem to be innocuous geometric forms that once again 

echo Minimalism and Modernism. Where is the ferocious beast, 

this slave to the full moon, with its characteristically dramatic 

and fearful howls? In which of the essential and dry forms of 

works such as Pinstripes (2008) – a triangular steel grid where 

different geometric motifs are repeated; or Hotel California 

(2008) – a wall comprising two semi-transparent sheets making 

that which appears behind the partition seem as if wrapped in a 

slight mist, is the lycanthrope hiding? 

The image suggested by the title of the exhibition is in reality 

a metaphor of wildness, of the slave to passions who regresses 

to the primitive nature of his origins, a metaphor of Man 

enacting violence against others, of the sadism and masochism 

latent in human nature. 

An essential and summary example is the work entitled 

Gulfstream V 1–4 (2007): four framed documents, 

complemented with four almost identical images of the aircraft 

mentioned in the title and four signatures at the bottom. 

The work was inspired by a news item in the Washington 

Post about the way in which some prisoners of war from 

Afghanistan and Iraq are taken to US bases in countries 

where the US legal system is not applied, thereby allowing 

for methods of interrogation other than those envisaged 

by US legislation. All data about the prisoners and the 

people involved in transport is false or can only be traced to 

anonymous mail boxes. The transformation of the individual 

from subject to object is total; the elimination of his identity 

sums up the capacity of Man, through self-negation, to merge 

with his brutal nature.

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, 

The Birth of Tragedy (1886). 

Installation view: Lycanthropic Chamber, 2008, StAndArd (OSlO), Oslo, Norway 

It is at this point that we manage to glimpse 

(in what seemed to be dry and essential 

geometric forms) the dismantling of tools of 

torture, objects that in some way lead back 

to the human figure, contemplating it as the 

subject of its function. These objects have 

assumed a different and almost opposite 

formal value to the originals, which were used 

as the analytical instruments of a particular 

point of view and which have transformed 

their nature into a narrative element. What 

seems to be the effective subject of this 

transformation is the myth hidden behind the 

image of the lycanthrope. 

Myth, closely linked to the concept of 

history and archaeology, serves as a reference 

point for reflection in Engh’s work. The artist’s 

research is linked to Myth in a similar way. He 

searches for those traces that go beyond what 

is visible, pushing into the universe of thought 

where the attainment of reality occurs through 

intangible and indemonstrable forms, the 

abstract concept to which the artist reduces 

the form originally carrying specific meanings 

The Greek word “mythos”, the meaning of 

which can be expressed by the concept of 

“irrational discourse” or legend, immediately 

indicates to us the almost “supernatural” sphere 

to which it refers. In this perspective, the work 

of the artist can be re-interpreted as the search 

for myth and its roots, for myth in its multitude 

of meanings but especially as the guide, spirit 

and soul of history and humanity. 

In our days we are much concerned with killing 

the myth. Today humans are left deprived of 

the myth, starving among all its antecedents 

and have to dig in panic for roots, even if it 

should be in the distant antique past. 1 

According to existential psychologist Rollo May, 

contemporary society is in crisis because of 

its loss of values and consequently of identity. 

May, reflecting on Nietzsche’s claim that God 

is dead, concludes that new myths must be 

sought and created to symbolise new values 

that will help and sustain Man in his endeavours 

to improve his existence. 

If we start from this assumption, Engh’s 

latest project Exhume To Consume can be 

better understood; more than the others, it 

enters into a dialogue directly with myth, its 

necessity and its creation. 

61

“It embodies the parallelism 

between Man’s success and failure, 

highlighting the corruptibility 

of Man and his contemporary 

search for salvation 

in order to survive.”

Engh’s interest in the details, traces and signs that civilisation 

has left behind over time brought him to Bosnia Herzegovina 

for archaeological/anthropological research. For some time, 

the population of this country supported the theories of a 

fellow countryman who claimed to have made a fundamental 

archaeological “discovery” that would overturn their cultural 

heritage and the entire history of civilisation: the “discovery” of 

pyramids, higher than those in Egypt and older than any other 

existing pyramid, presumably pre-dating the glacial age. 

Today, these pyramids form a valley with a mysteriously 

geometric appearance, mountains with rich vegetation that 

effectively resemble huge pyramids covered by a cloak of 

greenery. This discovery, if substantiated, would make a rewriting 

of history necessary, and Bosnia Herzegovina would 

assume the role of the “cradle of European civilisation”. 

The peaceful town of Visoko, standing on the slopes of what 

is known as the “sun pyramid”, bears witness to the immense 

curiosity that this “discovery” has aroused throughout the country 

and the rest of the world. But its truth is still very much in doubt. 

Excavations carried out to verify the validity of the thesis of the 

amateur archaeologist, who discovered the colossal pyramids, 

have revealed the presence of stones assembled by man, but 

they do not necessarily date back to such a distant time. In the 

meantime, this tranquil Bosnian town has become a tourist 

destination, a development that has had a profound effect on it. 

Whether the “discovery” is true or not clearly does not 

interest Engh in his research. What characterises this project 

is rather the need – embodied in the Bosnians’ enthusiasm for 

the remarkable claims – for an irrational, magical, legendary and 

mythical element that alone manages to reconstruct an identity 

shattered and worn out by the war that still echoes in this part 

of the world. All this seems to describe perfectly the complex 

condition implicit in the reconstruction of the unity and identity of 

a country that has survived such violent conflict recently: the need 

for and the relief found in being able to grasp a mythical reality 

that re-balances the past and the future in a kind of popular 

religious belief. 

The works in the project all refer to an idea of hope and 

desperation, of life and death, a contrast that seems to emerge 

precisely from a need that Man feels: the need to (re)build 

a temple to house vacillating certainties in a time in which 

guiding values can be overturned, mauled and down-trodden 

to the point of becoming worthless dust. In a dichotomy 

that compares the possibility of affirmation of power and its 

consequent manifestation with the possibility of failure, the 

works in Exhume To Consume emerge as elements linked with 

the concept of monumentality alongside depictions of temporary 

structures. This project embodies the parallelism between Man’s 

success and failure, highlighting the corruptibility of Man and 

his contemporary search for salvation in order to survive, a 

condition that the title of the project itself already suggests to 

us by referring to the insatiable hunger for myths devoured by 

contemporary man in his quest for Nietzsche’s absolute. 

stefania palumbO 

63

Lycanthropic 

Chamber

Gulfstream V (1–4) 

C-print on Fuji archival paper, signature on paper 

37 x 26 cm each (framed) 

2007 

66

Collar 

Oak wood in four pieces 

140 x 45 x 6 cm 

2008 

Pinstripes 

Welded steel and hinges 

2 x 240 x 208 cm 

2008

Bars 

Walnut wood frame and steel bars 

180 x 140 x 10 cm 

2008 

Nightwatch 

Walnut wood 

144 x 120.5 x 105 cm 

2008 

Hotel California 

Steel frame and aluminium sheets 

213 x 183 x 4 cm 

2008

Saltire 

Oak wood 

228 x 119.5 x 5 cm 

2008 

Defender Who Shall Not Be Seen 

Pine wood chair 

83 x 39 x 41 cm 

2008

Night Fall 

Ceramic tiles and car tires 

Dimensions variable. Tiles: 400 x 200 cm/tires: 62 cm 

2008 

72

Lead, Follow 

or Get the Hell Out of the Way 

Series of photographs, C-print, 94 x 64 cm (framed) 

2008 

5 of 14. Details 

(following six pages) 

74

Exhume 

To Consume

Hermes 

Polished granite stone slab 

150 x 45 x 45 cm 

2009 

81

Installation view: (from the left) 

Europe, Fussorius, Rock Bottom, Peace Trails (Tent) 

Supportico Lopez, Berlin, Germany 

Peace Trails (Tent) 

Welded steel structure, concrete, lacquer fabric 

200 x 170 x 170 cm 

2009 

Europe 

Bronze letters (six pieces) 

7 x 48.5 cm 

2009 

82

Holiday in Bosnia 

Watercolour on ten postcards 

49 x 97 cm (framed) 

2009

Rock Bottom 

Laser engraved photo on polished granite stone slab 

2 x 60 x 60 cm 

2009 

85

Fussorius 

Pickaxe, shovel and t-shirt 

Wood, cast iron and steel, cotton, textile print 


2009 

(both pages) 

86

THE RITUAL 

WHEN THINGS FALL APART: 

DISSOLUTION AND RESOLUTION 

WITHIN THE WORKS OF ANAWANA HALOBA

THE RITUAL 

WHEN THINGS FALL APART: 

DISSOLUTION AND RESOLUTION 

WITHIN THE WORKS OF ANAWANA HALOBA 

97

At a recent conference dedicated to reviewing 

the former editions of Documenta, held in the 

fall of 2009 at the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, 

Okwui Enwezor pointed out that as curator of 

the 12 th edition he wished to address how the 

global sphere narrates in relation to a wider 

range of traditions of form. This re-addressing 

of the traditions in and around the narrative and 

within oral culture seemed to evoke Jacques 

Ranciere’s thoughts about the poetic utterance 

as that which links the modern stance with 

political subjectivity. For Ranciere, poetry is an 

“art of composing fables that belongs to the 

political experience of the physical – that is to 

the relationship of the city – the laws that reign 

there, but also to the songs that are sung and 

to the humour of the citizens.” 

This understanding of the poetic is perhaps the 

best way to approach the working method of 

Zambian-born artist Anawana Haloba. 

Haloba’s artistic practice is symbiotically 

linked to her preparatory exercise of drafting 

poetry in the form of sketches, which she then 

98 

abstracts into performative-based works within 

installations incorporating moving images, 

objects and sound. “I look at my work as a 

project in the form of an ongoing discussion – 

a work that does not strive toward completion 

but is rendered as a point of departure from 

which a discussion starts,” observes Haloba. 

As an artist who attests to having written 

poetry from the time she could formulate a 

coherent sentence, Haloba insists that her 

reason for doing so was not to align herself 

with script that reflected the childlike visions 

of the fantastic or the rhythmic redundancy of 

the onomatopoetic. Instead, Haloba sourced 

the visual and socio-political landscape 

immediately available within her native Zambia 

in the formulation of her still youthful text: 

(opposite page)

When you look at me shirt once white but now cream white to the color khaki 

After been washed plain water for months 

My trousers once black but now faded to a dust grey 

My lips cracked with a darkening of black red dry blood 

My shoes half smiling and patched with pieces of different leather textures 

What I am is a neglected member of society 

What I am is a neglected member of the system 

I am a teacher, a civil servant and yet I should be a pillar 

Of tomorrow’s development 

99

100

1. Édouard Glissant, Poétique de la relation, 

Gallimard, 1990. 

Written at the age of eleven, this poem, like many others she 

wrote, was a reflection of the immediate landscape around 

her. At this time − during the final years of Kenneth Kaunda’s 

government and nearly twenty-seven years after Zambia’s 

independence − the socio-political climate of Lusaka was 

dominated by frequent strikes staged by the civil administration 

(civil servants, teachers, educational administrative workers, 

health workers and members of the trade unions). The 

stagnating economy of the late 1970s, combined with high 

unemployment and inflation levels and a shortage of foodstuffs, 

helped form the early political subjectivity that later influenced 

Haloba’s thought processes in the formulation of an artistic 

enquiry. When asked to explain what constitutes a political 

artist, Haloba rejects the category altogether: 

I don’t think an artist should aspire to construct a “political work” 

because an artist would not make a political work if one already 

lived within the political, wherein the political is already an organic 

part of the language. To be political is not the consequence of a 

conscious decision – one is either immersed in the political 

or one is not. 

Haloba exhibits an acute ability to fathom a field of symbolic 

representation as a way to establish a set of coordinates that 

establishes her own political subjectivity within the space of 

writing and within art. Through the drafting of her initial poetic 

sketches, Haloba imagines the transposition of the poetic into 

the corporeal – even sculptural – realm to provide form to 

what may otherwise be located within the psychological 

sphere. Within the potential of their figural economy, these 

sketches, or what the artist refers to as an archive of “audio 

clips” and as a compilation of “the noises of her mind”, 

allow Haloba to make physical the sense of alienation that 

accompanies the journey from private to public as rendered 

within such a work as When the Private Becomes Public, a film 

commissioned for the 16 th Biennale of Sydney in 2008. In this 

work, Haloba has taken the testimonies of five women from 

different cultural backgrounds and transposed their reflections 

on their roles within the private and public domain into a 

film that interweaves their words into ritualistic utterances, 

lamentations and gestural abstractions set within the 

Australian desert landscape. 

Haloba’s investigation of the private entering into the 

public realm similarly accentuates the lines of distinction 

between inclusion and exclusion. In his essay The Poetics 

of Relation 1 , French Caribbean author Édouard Glissant 

writes that every identity is rooted in and extended through 

its relationship with the Other. Glissant also observed that 

the duality of being both citizen and foreigner is realised in 

particular stages – through the awareness of territory and self, 

the experience of voyage and the Other, and the thinking of 

errantry and totality. Haloba recites these stages in recalling 

her own departure from her home in Zambia and her arrival 

in Norway as a student of the National Academy of Fine 

101

Arts in Oslo. She notes that at the time she felt a clear split of 

self – from perceiving herself as a twenty-one-year-old located 

within a vibrant time of her life, to an experience of the other, 

distanced self who enters into the architectural regiment of 

student housing to encounter an environment of isolation and 

suffer the feeling of a loss of community. 

“As a foreigner, I had a very heightened physical sense of 

exclusion and in that sense, my life assumed a particular track of 

exile,” Haloba explained. As a consequence, the artist manifested 

this sense of exile by casting her body and hands in plaster and 

installing the empty casts as ciphers of alienation. “I have always 

worked with hands and arms,” she offers, “as a way to express my 

own thinking – understanding hand gestures as more layered in 

meaning than facial gestures, and invested in the understanding 

that hands open out of a very private narrative into one about 

sharing and inclusion.” 

The cathartic and performative nature of Haloba’s individual 

works is rooted in the artist’s earlier performances, realised 

when she was still part of a collective with eight other artists 

in Lusaka. Framed as a single evening of events, the individual 

performances were staged in various public spaces throughout 

the city in an attempt to engage with the subjective responses 

of the individual viewer or city dweller. Haloba, who was 

originally educated within the sciences, choreographed her 

performances to both reflect upon and explore the neurological 

stimulus between the artist and the viewer. It was at this time 

that Haloba first realised the “salt-licked maps” that were later 

102 

documented on video. The performance involves the artist 

kneeling down and ritualistically manoeuvring throughout 

the salt-covered floor’s surface, drawing out imaginary maps 

with her tongue. The tongue operates on some visceral level 

to communicate the discomfort associated with this act while 

audibly transposing the psychoacoustics associated with this 

discomfort. At the same time, the tongue operates as a device 

of demystification with respect to the more historical reality 

– the scramble for Africa when the continent was randomly 

divided by the colonialists. 

Haloba’s early performances in Lusaka did not draw on the 

traditions of the dérive or the psycho-geography prevalent 

within the practices of the Situationists in France during the 

1960s. Rather, the collective’s performance referenced an 

anthropological and a metaphorical uprooting of a complicated 

history of partition prevalent throughout Africa. Although 

not directly referential, Haloba investigates the possible 

consciousness of a lost and broken community on a more 

abstract level to communicate the experience of internal 

exile. Within internal exile, identity may be reconceived of 

retrospectively through the past or it may be reconstructed 

according to past images and past experiences for the sake of 

an ideal future. Haloba uses both these approaches and, in doing 

so, finds it necessary to infuse the more abstract discussions 

with a recuperation of the real history. As a student of the 

National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo from 2004–2006, 

Haloba, together with fellow students from Colombia, Namibia

and Australia, initiated an external study group under the name 

The Postcolonial Reader to introduce, read and discuss postcolonialism 

in an effort to approach visual culture from a non- 

Eurocentric model of history. The group eventually disbanded 

when the respective students graduated, but in the years that 

it operated in Oslo, its members discussed how the Occident is 

repeatedly at risk of giving itself over to the West or of being 

recast as more archaic, less diversified communities. 

Haloba’s relationship with the renowned performance artist 

Joan Jonas, her former tutor at the Rijksakademie, initiated 

yet a new cycle and process for the artist, marking a period 

when Haloba sought to delve more concretely into her own 

personal history and culture while interweaving more universal 

elements, which helped to extract this experience to a wider 

frame of understanding. Haloba cites the importance of the 

experimental filmmaker Maya Deren, who was so central to 

the work of Joan Jonas, as an influence on her own sensibility. 

Deren provided a model for breaking down the motif of ritual 

to explore the rendering of myths and divinities for the purpose 

of simple poetic pondering: How do people recreate different 

cultures, and how do they come to terms with the cultures from 

which they are borrowing? What are the parallels to be found 

from an artist such as Joan Jonas, who borrows and applies 

from a distance, and someone immersed in an internal exile 

who confronts these issues more directly and on an everyday 

basis? At the centre of these questions is an understanding that 

exile generates a creative imagination. While maintaining an 

analytical point of view from the perspective of Africa/Zambia/ 

Lusaka/Oslo, Haloba seeks to unravel the global “narrative” that 

Enwezor refers to from an analytical perspective which is not 

about “storytelling” alone. 

At present, Anawana Haloba is immersed in research initiatives 

to further her understanding of the layers of her own native 

language. Reading Nonkeleko, the artist is studying Lozi society 

as it existed before British colonialism in order to learn more 

about self-governance and the role women played within that 

structure. A social history such as Nonkeleko or the 1954 film 

entitled Les Maitre Fous (Mad Masters), a film about Nigeria by 

the French filmmaker Jean Rouch, can provide the raw materials 

that help the artist understand ritual from the point of its falling 

apart and dissolution. In Haloba’s process of what Blanchot refers 

to as an “unworking”, she combines that which “exists before and 

beyond the work, with that which withdraws from the work, as a 

way to approach that which has neither to do with production or 

completion, but with interpretation and suspension and poetics.” 

maRta Kuzma 

103

104

Whose Privacy? 

Sound/sculptural interactive installation, 2008–2010 

Courtesy of the artist; Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; NotAm02 Studios, Oslo, Norway; 

Arts Council Norway; and Norwegian Visual Artists Association, Oslo, Norway 

(following two pages) 

105

108

Road Map 

Sound/sculptural/drawing interactive installation, 2007–2008 

Courtesy of the artist; Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and NotAm02 Studios, Oslo, Norway 

This project was made possible with assistance from the Office for Contemporary Art Norway 

(following two pages)

The Greater G8 

Advertising 

Market Stand 

Interactive sound/sculptural installation, 2007–2009 

Installation view: Making Worlds/Fare Mondi, 53 rd Venice Biennale 2009, Arsenale, Venice, Italy 



and Arts Council Norway 

(following two pages)

114

115

When the Private 

Became Public 

Video/sound installation in the 16 th Biennale of Sydney 2008 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia 


Produced during a residency at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Liverpool, Australia 


(following three pages)

Lamentation 

Video/sound installation, 2006–2007 

Courtesy of the artist and NotAm02 Studios, Oslo, Norway

Can you see…, 

Can you hear… 

Sound installation, 2007–2008 

Courtesy of the artist and NotAm02 Studios, Oslo, Norway 

This project was made possible with assistance from 

the Office for Contemporary Art Norway

For the 

Acquaintance 

of my Mind 

Were they without names? Were they without names? 

We don’t know who they are. We have been watching them. 

Will they make it? I wish they could fly. I wish I knew their names. 

We have heard of them, we have been watching them for too long. 

We don’t know their names yet we have watched them for too long. 

We have known of them and about them. 

I keep asking myself what their names would be. I keep watching them as 

You watch them. Watched as they walked past, a cloudy dust is created from the 

Troubled relationship of their feet and the earth their ancestors walked hundreds 

Of years before them, producing a stormy and thunderous silence that penetrates the fibers of my mind. 

Will we miss them? Will you miss them? Will I miss them? 

Will we remember them, will you remember them, I will remember. 

I scream out to ask for their names and reach out my hand. 

They shout back to me. A sound of many names, a sound that sounded like a song of despair. 

The names that where no more names. 

The names spoken out without desire to exist, the names that have become meaningless. 

The names that became no names. 

They became the unnamed, those without names. 

They walk past. Their feet knew no relationship with the earth, they dragged on. The land they knew refuses 

to embrace them and the people it knew refuses to embrace it. They are like an uprooted tree from the soil. 

A tree that had lost all its sisterly leaves and flowers that once blossomed, the brotherly branches and suckets 

that once mushroomed from its trunk, the cousinly twigs, shrubs, the enemy weeds that grew around it and 

its strong lover, the soil. 

They keep on walking; their shoulders bent down and troubled by the weight of their head borne. 

Their skeleton frame seems not to understand its relationship with the frail muscles it’s carrying. 

Their faces are like that of a man who has lost his soul to a strong witch that only exists in the darkest 

underworld of death. 

Captured and hidden under a huge rock that could only be moved by a white Knight. 

The only relationship they know is that of their skeletoned hands and the bundles they are holding. 

They cling on like a corpse that died holding a treasure from undiscovered worlds. 

They walk on with only what they hold. Their memories have turned into layers of foggy nights. 

Their eyes and minds refuse to look through the foggy nights. 

The anticipation of pain and joy doesn’t exist anymore. They are just there and they keep on walking. 

They know not of where they are going and where they came from is no more. 

We know of their pain, it is as evident to us as 

Our own fingers on our hands. The resounding song of despair is so loud. 

So loud in the loud silences of our minds and we keep on watching. 

I look on, still watching and I think again. Were they without names? 

I ask again, to myself. Were they without names? 

Those without names. 

© Anawana Haloba, 2007

LARS LAUMANN

LARS LAUMANN 

135

136 

For the perfect flaneur, for the passionate 

spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house 

in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and 

flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive 

and the infinite. 1 

Lars Laumann is an artist who maintains the role 

of “passionate spectator”. His work instinctively 

probes the deeper cultural meanings of our 

recent past and slips easily between cinema, 

literature, philosophy and history, while raising 

serious questions about the nature of 

“the spectacle” in contemporary culture. 

Video artist Doug Aitken has observed 

that today communication strategies from the 

commercial world and the art world have begun 

to occupy each other’s territories, and Laumann 

is an artist producing work at the cusp of this 

problematic. His work is metacritical; its subject 

matter is the complex interplay of relationships 

in culture and how signification can often be 

taken to absurd limits. At times his films seem 

like a memorial to the “age of signification” 

from the vantage point of a post-signifying 

age, where meaning as we have known it is 

disintegrating rapidly. 

Laumann shares a genealogy with 

Godard and Chris Marker, film essayists who 

produce powerful effects by creating an 

aesthetic disjunction between what we are 

looking at and what is being said. Marker 

especially would seem to be a touchstone, 

as he was at the forefront of introducing 

cinematic traces and fragments into the gallery 

space. As early as in 1958 André Bazin wrote 

that the primary matter of Marker’s work was 

intelligence as expressed in the film essay 

format. Laumann too displays a depth of 

intelligence in his art as opposed to the more 

ubiquitous “cleverness” so often encountered in 

the medium. Further, Laumann shares a “metafilmic” 

obsession with the artist Pierre Huyghe. 

Although their practices differ greatly, Daniel 

Birnbaum’s comment on Huyghe in Chronology, 

that his “video poses questions to film that 

film is incapable of putting to itself”, is equally 

applicable to Laumann. 

Laumann’s film Morrissey Foretelling 

the Death of Diana is ostensibly a film about 

a conspiracy theory encountered by him in 

internet chat rooms, a theory which sets out 

to prove that Morrissey’s lyrics for 

1. Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of 

Modern Life in The Painter of Modern 

Life and other essays, 

(Phaidon Press, 1964), 9. 

2. Lucy Reynolds, Outside the Archive: 

The World in Fragments in Jane 

Connarty and Josephine Lanyon (eds.), 

Ghosting: The Role of the Archive within 

Contemporary Artists’ Film and Video 

(Picture This, 2006), 22.

The Smiths’ album The Queen is Dead, 1986 display a clairvoyant 

knowledge of the future death of Princess Diana in 1997. 

Those of us who grew up with Morrissey as an icon in the 

1980s would be quite happy to believe that he had such powers. 

Part of Morrissey’s iconic status was the fact that he was so 

literate and culturally aware. He made reading sexy, quoting 

from Oscar Wilde, Proust, the Brontës, Hardy, Kerouac and 

of course his beloved Shelagh Delaney, author of A Taste of 

Honey. He also proved himself to be an astute and insightful 

semiotician of British culture in a decade when cultural studies 

and semiotics reached fever pitch. Roland Barthes, Jacques 

Derrida, Umberto Eco, Stephen Heath, Deleuze and Guattari 

were the cultural theorists you simply had to familiarise yourself 

with if you were studying literature or philosophy or even if you 

were merely playing “spot the signifier” whilst out and about. For 

Laumann to make a film about Morrissey as a cultural shaman of 

sorts just seems to make perfect sense. 

Laumann’s baroque unfolding of his Diana conspiracy would 

seem to follow the rhizomatic principle of Deleuze and Guattari, 

presenting us with a type of cultural cartography which is 

“acentric, non-hierarchical and a-signifying.” It is as if Laumann has 

structured the film to introduce conspiracies within the conspiracy 

– a perfect aesthetic conceit. The work becomes an investigation 

of the form he chooses to use. Starting with Alain Delon from 

L’Eclisse, he weaves a path through The L-Shaped Room (with 

its subtext of lesbianism), Darling, A Taste of Honey, The Man 

who came to Dinner, The Killing of Sister George and Hobson’s 

Choice – creating a vortex of cinematic signification. 

There are larger issues emerging here: the computerisation 

of the public and private sphere has led to a digital society 

where traditional knowledge systems of inference and induction 

have broken down, hence the propensity for wildfire conspiracy 

theories. There is a sense that no one can trust where 

information is coming from; yet at the same time, all information 

– no matter how irrational or crazy it seems – is of equal value. 

We also find a new preoccupation with coincidence in 

contemporary culture. It seems like some kind of therapeutic 

strategy for dealing with increasing alienation, a way of coping 

with the density of new social networks. This is no doubt related 

to the death of religion and to what philosopher Paul Virilio calls 

the fantasy of simultaneity imposed on us by globalisation. 

The acceleration taking place in our present culture also 

leads to an intensification in the rate of accumulation of 

information. With so much becoming obsolete so quickly, we 

have become obsessed with cataloguing and archiving the “past” 

in new ways as time slips more rapidly through our fingers. 

In Outside the Archive: The World in Fragments 

Lucy Reynolds has written: 

Experimental filmmakers’ tactics of subversive intervention 

constitute an assault on cinema’s homogenous surfaces … 

as outsider archivists they break into the layers of history locked 

into the film image in an attempt to assimilate their own position 

as artist filmmaker to that of film’s wider circles of history. 2 

Laumann certainly utilises this strategy. 

In Berlinmuren (The Berlin Wall) Laumann presents us with 

a portrait of a woman who describes herself as an “objectum 

sexual”, a woman who falls in love with and marries the Berlin 

Wall. Superficially, this would seem to be a portrait of an 

idiosyncratic and transgressive human being, but as with all 

of Laumann’s work there is far more here than the banality of 

psychological interpretations which, 

137

with their “normalising” agenda, tend towards the prescriptive 

and reductionistic. Historically, many philosophers and writers 

have had strong animistic tendencies, and Mrs Berlinermauer 

calls herself an animist. We find strains of animism in Plotinus, 

Sartre, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Joyce and even Proust, who wrote: 

138 

The various places of the earth are also beings, whose personality is 

so strong that some people die from being separated from them. 3 

What does it mean for an artist (as opposed to, say, a 

documentary filmmaker) to make a film about a woman who 

loves a wall, especially the Berlin wall? 

Eija-Ritta Berlinermauer is a woman who both aesthetically 

and sexually finds walls and fences attractive. Horizontal lines in 

particular stimulate her. 

How many minimalist artists have suffered the same passion 

for such lines? From Carl André to Richard Serra to the artist 

Andreas Slominski, who succeeded in building a wall from top to 

bottom in the Serpentine Gallery, walls and other built structures 

do arouse devotion in many people, but it seems this is only 

considered acceptable if purged of sexuality and romance. 

The Berlin Wall could be said to represent the “Law” in a 

symbolic and Kafkaesque sense. Eija-Ritta Berlinermauer loves 

a structure that was the quintessential symbol of law being 

enforced: the physical manifestation of separate legal and 

political zones which, if you crossed over, could put your life at 

risk. A wall is the ultimate form after all and a very primal one. 

The Berlin wall no doubt seemed the ultimate form of security 

to its new lover. It was impenetrable and utterly reliable: the 

perfect husband! 

One of the more interesting analyses of the relationship 

between Desire and Walls can be found in Katherine Schonfeld’s 

book Walls Have Feelings Too: Architecture, Film and the City, 

where she discusses Roman Polanski’s preoccupation with walls. 

Polanski lived in the Cracow ghetto until he was 

four, and when the Nazis came his father lifted 

up the fence that was the border to the ghetto 

and pushed him through to freedom. In many 

of Polanski’s films we see the transgression 

of an architectural edge or boundary. Walls, 

floors, etc are seen as a sexual threat of 

bodily violation. His film Repulsion (1965) is 

almost the inverse of The Berlin Wall in which 

Catherine Deneuve’s character is repulsed and 

feels violated by the walls of her flat. Similarly, 

in Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Tenant 

(1976), walls are treacherous structures. 

This could be seen as a response to the fears 

aroused by Brutalist architecture of the time, 

when interiors were reduced to being merely 

the “other” side of someone else’s wall. 

Clement Greenberg, writing on Kafka’s Great 

Wall of China, suggested that the wall is a 

metaphor for how culture is used by humanity 

to keep the “formless” at bay. Laumann’s film 

brings with it added connotations today, given 

our present cultural conditions in which “form” 

is often dissolved in a matrix of virtuality. The 

notable crisis of Interiority/Exteriority that 

became manifest in the culture of the 1960s 

and 70s, and which gave the wall a specific 

potency, also finds its present equivalent in the 

breakdown of the public/private domains. 

In Shut Up Child, This Ain’t Bingo we find 

Laumann touching on the subject of 

Interiority/Exteriority again, both in terms of 

the “inside” confined world of the prison for 

Carlton the death row prisoner, 

3. Marcel Proust, Jean Santeuil, trans. Gerar 

Hopkins (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 

1955), 896.

and the “external” free world of the artist, but also in terms of 

private (internal) thought structures and public (social) systems 

of thought. 

There is a Proustian element to this film, not only because 

it is about the nature of love and how that affects people’s 

understanding of their own thoughts, but also in the utterances 

of Carlton about his life and memories: 

What do last words mean? It’s all the words that come before last 

words that matter. 

At one stage, Laumann, through an intermediary, asks Carlton to 

tell him his favourite riddle and Carlton says: 

What’s the difference between a picture of Jesus and the real 

Jesus? It only takes one nail to hang a picture of Jesus. 

We are presented with a disturbing and ironic image of a man 

awaiting death (based on a judgement guided by religious 

morality) which exposes the sacrificial codes that frame 

execution rituals. This riddle highlights the problem of reality 

and representation in today’s culture and represents the type of 

linguistic subversiveness Laumann fosters in all his work. Carlton 

talks about coincidence and systems of belief, echoing motifs 

in the Morrissey film. The artist who loves him 

(Kjersti Andvig, a close friend of Laumann’s), 

questioning signs and signification and her own 

memory, begins to look for secret signs around 

her. In a statement which could almost be from 

Baudrillard or Virilio, she says: “Texas has no idea 

about aesthetics except in the death chamber, it’s 

so cinematic.” This reveals the film to be as much 

about truth, representation and reality as it is 

about the central couple. Laumann weaves the 

sadistic voyeurism of the death chamber into a 

subtle analysis of cultural voyeurism on a larger 

scale and the instability of identity amidst such 

conditions. 

In the installation Swedish Bookstore, we 

find Laumann drawing more explicitly on 

his bibliophiliac upbringing (his father had 

a bookstore). The focus of this installation 

is a scene from the film Top Secret, set in 

a bookstore, in which the soundtrack was 

reversed as the original directors (Abrahams, 

Zucker and Zucker) thought that doing this 

would make it sound like 

139

an authentic foreign language (an American’s idea of 

“Scandinavian”!). Laumann plays the scene “backwards”, which 

returns it to its original English. 

The increasing obsolescence and strangeness of books, 

the relationship between language and text, and the radical 

transformation of links between the spoken word and a text 

could be said to be themes of this work. For Derrida the 

construction of archives and libraries also evokes the notion of 

imprisonment. In Archive Fever he writes: 

140 

Documents at once need a Guardian and a localisation. It is thus, 

in this House arrest, that archives take place. 4 

Laumann’s recent 3-channel film installation about Nico’s death 

(You Can’t Pretend To Be Somebody Else – You Already Are), 

a collaborative venture with Benjamin A. Huseby, is a mesmeric 

take on the intriguing life and tragically absurd death of 

a particularly fascinating cultural icon. Using three male 

actors from the London drag collective House of Egypt (each 

representing a different stage in her life), Laumann and Huseby 

incorporate a dramatised voiceover based on interviews given 

by Nico. As the title suggests, this film is essentially about the 

collapse of identity, both in its central subject and in the broader 

sense. Nico describes how she felt like a moving target and how 

she wanted to occupy a “nowhere” space, how she never really 

wanted to be a woman. To her, being a woman meant being 

judged harshly as a mother, as a heroin addict and as a musician, 

with striking disparity in relation to her male counterparts. 

Laumann and Huseby negotiate these monologues through 

beautifully shot footage in Ibiza – recreating that intense 

poetic atmosphere found in the early films of Phillippe Garrel 

in which Nico starred. Le Cicatrice Interieure (The Inner Scar), 

1971, is the most obvious point of reference, with its dreamlike 

scenes of Nico and Garrel wandering aimlessly in the desert, 

without any coordinates, lost in an interior world of psychotropic 

4. Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever, trans. Eric Prenowitz. 

(University of Chicago Press, 1995), 2. 

*The deterritorialisation of a major language by means of a minor 

literature written in a major language from 

a marginalised or minoritarian position. 

experimentation. Laumann has told me that Dreyer’s cinematic 

world of “dreams within dreams” in Vampyr (1932) was one of 

their sources of inspiration. Indeed, when one considers that 

Vampyr was based on the Sheridan Le Fanu story Carmilla, itself 

a tale of shattered perception and transgressive sexuality, the 

connection becomes evident. Laumann and Huseby mine the 

layers of cultural mythology attached to Nico: the Warholian 

aura she acquired and the sense of timelessness she exuded, 

the experimental sexualities espoused at the time of her 

involvement with the Velvet Underground, and her dissolution 

into a world of anonymity. This elegiac installation (as with so 

many of Laumann’s artworks) manages to foster a melancholic 

tenderness towards its subject’s complicated persona. 

Kari og Knut, Laumann’s new project, uses a variety of media 

(including video and a return to found footage) and reflects 

once more his great love of literature. He chooses another iconic 

figure, that of the elusive J.D. Salinger, to explore issues relating 

to both State and personal censorship. Laumann intentionally 

draws on the Situationist tactic of “détournement” as developed 

by Guy Debord in The Society of the Spectacle, 1967, where 

found footage and materials are used subversively for new 

ends (a tactic perhaps finding its more recent manifestation in 

Deleuze’s conceptualising of a “minoring” strategy*). The title 

Kari og Knut refers to a Norwegian nursery rhyme which bears 

a close resemblance to the eponymous tale told in The Catcher 

in the Rye: Holden’s fantasy of dedicating his life to catching 

children as they run towards a cliff to their deaths. 

Using films such as Can dialetics break bricks? and 

What’s Up, Tiger Lily? as structural precedents, Laumann 

appropriates scenes from the 1995 Iranian film Pari by director 

Dariush Mehrjui, itself a version of Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, 

and replaces the soundtrack with a voiceover by a teenage 

Iranian girl berating both Salinger’s self-censorship and State

censorship in America and Iran. Salinger famously took legal 

action to block the showing of this film in New York in 1998. 

Other images of State and personal censorship are intercut with 

this footage to create a powerful work against the suppression 

of literature and art, but the reason this film has such an 

affective capacity is due yet again to the many layers Laumann 

manages to embed in the work: the exploration of contrasting 

views of freedom of expression in East and West, the mythology 

of the individualised self and how it came to be represented 

in the icon of the “Modernist” author, and what it means when 

that author, a man who was one of the first soldiers to enter the 

liberated concentration camps at the end of WWII, later chose to 

become “formless” and engage in acts of self-censorship. 

The sense of self-immolation associated with Islamic culture, 

of sacrificing oneself for a cause, also echoes through the Kari 

og Knut/Catcher in the Rye metaphor (where is the Salinger 

now who would stand at that cliff face and save those fleeing 

to its edge?). 

We live in an age when cultural icons such as Diana, Morrissey, 

Nico, Salinger, and those who live at the extreme edge of 

society (the death row prisoner, the woman who loves walls) 

have become absorbed into a world of virtuality where their 

boundaries dissolve beyond even the fractured identities of 

previous cultural epochs. Their stories multiply and transform 

amidst this time of saturated communication. Laumann engages 

with the problematic of whether a cultural semiotics is even 

possible today, pursuing as he does the “fault lines between 

[cinema’s] seductive surfaces, through which a multitude of 

histories seep” (Lucy Reynolds). The depth and complexity of his 

work has even begun to produce its own strange coincidences. 

At the end of Berlinmuren we see perhaps the only scene 

in which Laumann disassembles the image completely: we 

perceive a formless mass of colour gradually taking shape as 

we hear Riita talk about the horror of seeing her husband, the 

wall, being torn down. For her this is the ultimate of forms 

being disassembled. A figure begins to emerge from the mass 

of colour – could it possibly be…? Yes, it’s The Hoff – David 

Hasselhoff dancing in his 1980s leather jacket singing on the 

wall for the freedom of East Germany. 

The film Top Secret (used by Laumann in Swedish bookstore) 

is a 1984 spoof in which Val Kilmer plays an American teen rock 

idol intent on entertaining teenagers behind the Iron Curtain in 

East Germany. Surely this coincidence presents us with the most 

ludicrous cultural icon of our age, as we descend from Morrissey 

and Nico to the “Hoff”. Is this what the fall of the wall really 

meant? The “X-factorisation” of culture for us all? We can at 

least gain some comfort in the fact that artists such as Laumann, 

with his profound engagement with literature, the history of 

cinema and art, are making work to counter such calamities. 

KatheRine waugh 

141

Morrissey Foretelling 

the Death of Diana 

Single channel video 

French, English, Spanish, Dutch, 

and German, 16 minutes 

2006 

(following four pages)

Swedish Book Store 

Monitor VHS 

Loop 

2007 


Berlinmuren 

Video installation, German English 

24 minutes 

2008 


Shut up Child, 

This Ain’t Bingo 

Single channel video 

59 minutes 

2009 

(following four pages)

You Can’t Pretend To Be Somebody Else 

– You Already Are 

3-channel video installation 

2009 

(collaboration with Benjamin A Huseby)

164

165

166 

currIcula 

vITaE

Ida Ekblad 

Born 1980 in 

Oslo, Norway 

Lives and works in 

Oslo, Norway 

EDUCATION 

2008 Mountain School of Arts, 

Los Angeles, CA, USA 

2005–2007 Master of Fine Arts, Oslo National 

Academy of the Arts, Oslo, Norway 

2002–2005 Bachelor of Fine Arts, the National 

Academy of Fine Arts, Oslo, Norway 

2000–2001 Central St. Martins College of Art, 

Department of Fine Art, London, UK 

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 

2009 Frieze Art Fair, Frame, London, UK 

(under the auspices of Gaudel 

De Stampa, Paris, France) 

Karma International, Zurich, 

Switzerland (with Tobias Madison) 

Salty Sap Green Black, 

The Journal Gallery, NY USA 

Galerie since the summer of 69, 

New York City, NY, USA 

What leaf? What mushroom?, 

New Jerseyy and Basel, Switzerland 

Febermalerier, Galerie Gaudel 

De Stampa, Paris, France 

A woman under the influence, 

Galleri Annen Etage, Oslo, Norway 

In exile from the mineral kingdom, 

Galleria Alessandro de March, 

Milan, Italy 

2008 Silver ruins, Fotogalleriet, 

Oslo, Norway 

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 

2009 Ida Ekblad, David Hominal, Alistair 

Frost, Gavin Brown’s enterprise, 


Favored Nations, Momentum, 5 th 

Nordic Biennial of Contemporary 

Art, Moss, Norway (curators: Lina 

Džuverović and Stina Högkvist) 

Bad Moon Rising, Galerie sans titre, 

Brussels, Belgium 

(curator: Jan Van Woensel) 

Problem Solving: Express Yourself, 

Uplands Gallery, Melbourne, Australia 

Younger Than Jesus, New Museum, 

New York City, NY, USA (curators: 

Lauren Cornell, Massimiliano Gioni 

and Laura Hoptman) 

Prose pour des Esseintes, Karma 

International, Zurich, Switzerland 

Grave Accent, Gaudel De Stampa, 

Paris c/o Galerie Micky Schubert, 

Berlin, Germany 

Dark Fair, Kölnischer Kunstverein, 

Cologne, Germany (presented by 

Milwaukee International) 

ab·strac·tion·al, Museum 52, 


2008 Benefit Auction, Swiss Institute, New 

York City, NY, USA 

Dark Continents, MOCA, Museum 

of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL, USA 

(Publication), Canada, 


Art Since the Summer of 69, 


Dark Fair, Swiss Institute, New York 

City, NY, USA (curators: Scott and 

Tyson Reeder) 

mSA, Mountain School of Arts, 


Good News For People Who Love Bad 

News, Swiss Institute, New York City, 

NY, USA (curator: Gianni Jetzer) 

Background, Preus Museum, Horten, 

Norway (curator: Jonas Ekeberg) 

(Publication) 

Medium Cool, Art in General, 


(curator: Hanne Mugaas) 

Lights On, Astrup Fearnley 

Museum of Art, Oslo, Norway 

NADA, Miami, FL, USA (under the 

auspices of Karma International, 

Zurich, Switzerland) 

2007 The Corny Show, Karma International, 

Zurich, Switzerland 

Tower, W 139 Amsterdam, 

the Netherlands 

(curator: Jonas Ohlsson) 

mA degree show, Oslo National 

Academy of the Arts, 

The Stenersen Museum, Oslo, Norway 

Robert Smithson, Fotogalleriet, Oslo, 

Norway (curators: Lina Viste Grønli 

and Anders Smebye) 

Paris Was Yesterday, Galerie La 

Vitrine, Paris, France 


The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The 

Green Gallery, Milwaukee, 

WI, USA (with Marius Engh) 

Von Zamlla mina mannar & ida, 

Galleri De Praktijk, Amsterdam, the 

Netherlands 


2006 The Copy and Paste Show, Rhizome, 

New Museum of Contemporary Art, 



Giving People What They Want, 

Glassbox, Paris, France 

The Art Academy in Exile, UKS, 

Oslo, Norway 

Everything I do (I do it for you), Projekt 

0047, Berlin, Germany 


Fultjacks Blot, Raid Projects, Los 

Angeles, CA, USA 


The Early Show, White Columns, New 

York City, NY, USA (curators: Tyson 

Reeder, Scott Reeder 

and Elysia Borowy) 

C U (on The Other) Side, Bastard, 

Oslo, Norway 

167

168 

Marius Engh 

Born 1974 in 

Oslo, Norway 

Lives and works in Oslo, 

Norway, and Berlin, 

Germany 

EDUCATION 

1996–2000 The National Academy of Fine Arts, 

Oslo, Norway 

1999–2000 The Royal Danish Art Academy, 

Copenhagen, Denmark 


Master studio, Oslo, Norway 

1994–1996 Strykejernet Art School, Oslo, Norway 

RESIDENCIES 

2006 oCA Office for Contemporary Art 

Norway/Platform Garanti Residency 

Program Istanbul, Istanbul, Turkey 

Milwaukee International Residency 

Program, Milwaukee, WI, USA 

2005 The National Academy of Fine Arts, 

Oslo, Norway – Arcueil, Paris, France 


2009 Exhume to Consume, 

Supportico Lopez, Berlin 

Center of the World, Preus Museum, 

Horten, Norway 

(curator: Jonas Ekeberg) 

Toe Pincher, Snowball Editions, 

Oslo, Norway 

2008 Lycanthropic Chamber, StANDArD 

(oSLo), Oslo, Norway 

2006 All Items Must Fit In Basket, 

StANDArD (oSLo), Oslo, Norway 

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Green 

Gallery, Milwaukee, WI, USA 

(with Ida Ekblad) 

2005 No Comply, Richard and Dolly Maass 

Gallery, State University of New York, 

Purchase College, New York City, NY, 

USA (curator: Paul Brewer) 

B-Sides, Projekt 0047, 


Cum Taedio In Infinitum, Q, The Royal 

Danish Academy of Art, Copenhagen, 

Denmark 

(with Tarje Eikanger Gullaksen) 

2003 Free Drinks, Fotogalleriet, 

Oslo, Norway 

1999 Notes From The Underground, Galleri 

21:25, Oslo, Norway 

(with Gardar Eide Einarsson) 


2009 Six Degrees of Separation, 

Mehdi Chouakri, Berlin, Germany 

Two in One, Witte de With Center of 

Contemporary Art and 

De Appel, Christie´s, 

Amsterdam, the Netherlands 

Gjengangere, Bastard, Oslo 

Survival Kit, Latvian Centre for 

Contemporary Art (LCCA), Riga, Latvia 

(curator: Solvita Krese) 

2008 Show Me, Don’t Tell Me, Brussels 

Biennial 1, Brussels, Belgium (curators: 

Nicolaus Schafhausen and Florian 

Waldvogel) 

Horror Vacui, Layr Wuestenhagen 

Contemporary, Vienna, Austria 

We Have Never Met Before, But It´s 

WIith Great Anticipation of Your 

Understanding That I´m Writing You 

And I Hope You Will In Good Faith 

Give A Deep Consideration To My 

Proposal Below, StANDArD (oSLo), 

Oslo, Norway (curators: Mikkel E 

Astrup and Eivind Furnesvik) 

Frieze Art Fair, StANDArD (oSLo), 

London, UK 

When You Carry A Hammer A Lot 

Of Things Look Like Nails, Skalitzer 

Strasse 64, Berlin, Germany 

Figureheads, Torpedo Bokhandel/The 

White Tube, Oslo, Norway 

Hydro Corporate Collection, Henie 

Onstad Art Centre, Høvik, Norway 

Nerhagen Skogsfestival, Vang, Norway 

Nationalmuseum, Nationalmuseum 

Berlin, Schönleinstr. 6, 


(curator: Lars Monrad Vaage) 

Master of Puppets, Planka, Oslo, 

Norway (with Sverre Gullesen) 

2007 Frieze Art Fair, StANDArD (oSLo), 

London, UK 

Tempo Skien, Public Art Project, 

Skien, Norway 

Robert Smithson, Fotogalleriet, Oslo, 

Norway (curators: Lina Viste Grønli 

and Anders Smebye) 

Routines of Resistance, StANDArD 


(curator: Eivind Furnesvik) 

Unknown Unknowns, NordJyllands 

Kunstmuseum, Aalborg, Denmark 

(curator: Tarje Gullaksen) 

Future Primitive, UKS, Oslo, Norway 

(curator: Helga Marie Nordby) 

Skate Culture, Bildmuseet, Umeå, 

Sweden (curators: Jonas Ekeberg and 

Gardar Eide Einarsson) 

Paris Was Yesterday, La Vitrine, Paris, 

France (curator: Hanne Mugaas) 

Dislocations (Don’t Try Popping 

Them Back Into Place), ArCo – 

Special Projects Section/StANDArD 

(oSLo), Madrid, Spain (curator: Chus 

Martinez, with Gardar Eide EInarsson 

and Matias Faldbakken) 

2006 NADA, StANDArD (oSLo), Miami, FL, 

USA 

Milwaukee International, Willy Wonka 

Inc., Milwaukee, WI, USA 

Dice Thrown (Will Never Annul 

Chance), Bellwether Gallery, New York 

City, NY, USA (curator: Joao Ribas) 

White Stains, StANDArD (oSLo)/ 

Extra City, Antwerpen, Belgium 

Skate Culture, Bergen Kunsthall, 

Bergen, Norway (curators: Jonas 

Ekeberg and Gardar Eide Einarsson) 

Street: Behind The Cliché, Witte 

de With Contemporary Art Center, 

Rotterdam, the Netherlands (curators: 

Nicolaus Schafhausen and 

Renske Janssen) 

Bokaktig, Fotogalleriet, Oslo, Norway 

The Norwegian Sculpture Biennial, 

The Vigeland Museum, Oslo, Norway 

(curator: Cecilia Widernheim) 

There Are Two Paths, Torpedo 

Kunstbokhandel, Oslo, Norway 

(curators: Ida Ekblad and Hanne 

Mugaas) 

Giving the People What They Want, 

Glassbox, Paris, France (curator: 

Hanne Mugaas) 

Several Ways Out, UKS Gallery, Oslo, 

Norway (curator: Craig Buckley)

Skate Culture, Preus Museum, Horten, 

Norway (curators: Jonas Ekeberg and 

Gardar Eide Einarsson) 

50/50, AK 28, Stockholm, Sweden 

Villa Jelmini – The Complex of 

Respect, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, 

Switzerland (curator: Philippe Pirotte) 

2005 Blankness Is Not A Void, StANDArD 


(curator: Gardar Eide Einarsson) 

Gardar Eide Einarsson/Marius Engh/ 

Matias Faldbakken, StANDArD 

(oSLo)/Liste 05, StANDArD (oSLo), 

Basel, Switzerland 

2004 Salon 100 – Works on Paper, 

Heimdalsgaten 4, Oslo, Norway 

(temporary exhibition space) 

Standard Escape Routes, ISCP, New 

York City, NY, USA 

(curator: Eivind Furnesvik) 

Pilot 1 – International Art Forum, 

Limehouse Town Hall, London, UK 

Rank Xerox, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, 

Norway (project by Gardar Eide. 

Einarsson and Matias Faldbakken) 

10 Years After, Bomuldsfabriken 

Kunsthall, Arendal, Norway, 

(with Anders Smebye) 

Shugacube, Vincent Lunges Institutt, 

No. 9 – Visningssted for Samtidskunst, 

Oslo, Norway 

Vækerø Sculpture Garden, Public Art 

Project, Oslo, Norway 

Listepop, Fotogalleriet, Oslo, Norway 

Liste 04, under the auspicy of 

Fotogalleriet, Basel, Switzerland 

2003 Institiution 2 , Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland 

(curator: Jens Hoffmann) 

Rathaus, Oslo Open, Atelier C, 

City Hall, Oslo, Norway 

Merry-Go-Round, Video program, 

Oslo Open, Oslo, Norway 

2002 Museum of Installation, London, UK 

Bjørvika 17. august, Skur 55, Bjørvika, 

Subcomandante, Oslo, Norway 

Brøl, Zoo Copenhagen, 

Frederiksberg, Denmark 

2001 UKS biennalen 2001, 

Seilduksfabrikken, Oslo, Norway 

Fane, Galleri Elbowroom, 

Gothenburg, Sweden 

Måske, Norbergfestivalen, 

Norberg, Sweden 

Heavy Backstage, Ballongmagasinet 

2000 Postprofessionalism, VCA, 

Melbourne, Australia 

Presenting the piece/Her er værket!, 

Otto, Galleri Rhizom, Århus, Denmark 

Cantine del Borgo II, 

Underhaugsveien, Oslo, Norway 

Graduation Show, The National 

Academy of Fine Arts, The Stenersen 

Museum, Oslo, Norway 

Bergen Museum For Samtidskunst, 

Bergen, Norway 

Forrett, Statens kunstakademi, 

Seilduksfabrikken, Oslo, Norway 

1999 Weisse Zwerge und Grosse Riesen, 

Galleri Neu Deli, Bauhaus Universität, 

Weimar, Germany 

Cantine del Borgo, Galleri 21:25, SKA, 

Oslo, Norway 

Vibrations, Rogaland Contemporary 

Art Center, Stavanger, Norway 

1998 Die Faster Recordings, Quicksilver 

Gallery, Middelsex School of Art, 

London, UK 

Heavy Backstage – Live In Bergen, 

Bergen Museum For Samtidskunst, 

Bergen, Norway 

The Great Rock’n’Roll Battle (The Best 

Of Frode Fivel), Heavy Backstage, 

Galleri 21:25, Oslo, Norway 

Heavy Backstage, Telemark University 

College, Bø, Telemark, Norway 

Annekset, Galleri 21:25, Oslo, Norway 

(with Daniel Jensen) 

1997 Heavy Backstage, Annekset, the 

National Academy of Fine Arts, Oslo, 

Norway (with Daniel Jensen) 

Punkpartyperformance, Galleri 21:25, 

Oslo, Norway 

OTHER ACTIVITIES 

2008 Co-curator of the exhibition When 

You Carry A Hammer A Lot Of Things 

Look Like Nails, in Skalitzer Strasse 

64, Berlin, with Marco Bruzzone 

2005–2006 Co-founder and -curator of the gallery 

Bastard in Oslo, Norway, 

with Anders Smebye 

2004 Curator of the public art project 

Vækerø Sculpture Garden, 

Oslo, Norway 

169

170 

Anawana Haloba 

Born 1978 in 

Livingstone, Zambia 


Oslo, Norway 

EDUCATION 

2002–2006 National Academy of Fine Arts, 

Oslo, Norway 

1998–2000 Evelyn Hone College of Applied Arts 

and Commerce, Lusaka, Zambia 

RESIDENCIES 

2008 (February–April) When The Private 

Became Public (project), 

Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, 

Liverpool, Australia 

2007–2008 Rijksakademie van beeldende 

kunsten/Dutch Ministry of Education, 

Culture and Science, Amsterdam, 

the Netherlands 

2001–2002 Apprenticeship in stone sculpture, 

Rockston Studio 1985, 

Lusaka, Zambia 

FELLOWSHIPS 

2008 Office for Contemporary Art Norway 

(Rjiksakademie Research 

Residency Fellowship) 

2007 Ministry of Foreign Affairs/DCo/ 

IC, the Netherlands (Rjiksakademie 

Research Residency Fellowship) 

Office for Contemporary Art Norway 

(Rjiksakademie Research 

Residency Fellowship) 

AWARDS 

2006 Res Artis, winner of a residency at 

the Casula Power House Arts Centre, 


Prix spécial Franco-Allemand, Dak’art 

2006, Dakar, Senegal 


2009 Aneks Gallery & Municipal Gallery 

Arsenal, Poznan, Poland 

2008 Lamentations, Casula Power House, 


2005 Lamentations, Gallery 21-25, 

Oslo, Norway 

Loud Silence, NSA Gallery, 

Durban, South Africa 

2004 Senseless Wars, Dakar, Senegal 

2003 Both Ways, Konse Kubili, Lusaka, 

Zambia, Art review in NKA Journal of 

Contemporary African Art No 21, 

fall 2007 

2000 Anawana and Milumbe at Café d’Afrik, 



2009 mIP2 2009 Manifestação 

Internacional de Performance, Belo 

Horizonte, Brazil 

53 rd International Art Exhibition, 

Venice Biennale, ”Making Worlds”, 

Venice, Italy, 7 June–22 November 

2008 Open Ateliers, Rijksakademie van 

beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, 

the Netherlands (exh. cat.) 

Rest of Now, Manifesta 7, 

Bolzano, Italy (exh. cat.) 

Revolutions – Forms that turn, 

16 th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, 

Australia (exh.cat.) 

2007 Trans cape, CAPE 2007, 

Cape Town, South Africa 

Open Ateliers, Rijksakademie van 

beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, 

the Netherlands (exh. cat.) 

Still life. Art, ecology and the politics 

of change, Sharjah Biennial 8, Sharjah, 

United Arab Emirates (exh. cat.) 

The Annual Exhibition of the Visual 

Art (Høstutstillingen) 

Oslo, Trondheim, Norway 

2006 Dakar Biennale of Contemporary 

African Art, Dakar, Senegal (exh. cat.) 

Afrique-Europe : rêves croisés, 

Ateliers des Tanneurs, 

Brussels, Belgium (exh. cat.) 

mA degree show 2006, the National 

Academy of Fine Arts, Oslo, Norway 

(exh. cat.) 

2005 ProgMe, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 

(exh. cat.) 

2002 Essence of a Woman, Madison 

Insurance, Lusaka, Zambia 

2001 Women’s Eclipse of the sun, 


African Union summit, Lusaka, Zambia 

2000 Women beyond borders, 

College of the Canyons Art Gallery, 

Santa Clarita, CA, USA 

Towards the National Ngoma awards, 

Lusaka, Zambia

Lars Laumann 

Born 1975 in 

Brønnøysund, Norway 


Berlin, Germany and 

New York City, nY, usa 

EDUCATION 


Oslo, Norway 

1993–1995 Nordland College of Art and Film, 

Kabelvåg, Norway 


2010 Kunsthalle Winterthur, 

Winterthur, Switzerland 

Foxy Production, New York City, NY, 

USA 

2009 Maureen Paley, London, UK 

Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, 

Fort Worth, tX, USA 

Galway Arts Centre, as part of the 

Galway Arts Festival, Galway, Ireland 

The Trænafestival, Træna, Norway 

2007 Morrissey Foretelling the Death of 

Diana, White Columns, New York City, 

NY, USA 

Morrissey Foretelling the Death 

of Diana, Vox Populi/Screening, 

Philadelphia, PA, USA 

2006 The Thick Plottens, Galuzin Gallery, 

Oslo, Norway 

Entre Chienne et Louve, Le 

Commissariat, Paris, France 

2005 Vinterfestukekunstner (winter festival 

artist), Ofoten Museum, Narvik, 

Norway (with Kjersti Andvig) 


2009 The Reach of Realism, Museum of 

Comtemporary Art, North Miami, 

North Miami, FL, USA 

(curator: Ruba Katrib) 

As Long As It Lasts, Marian Goodman 

Gallery, New York City, NY, USA 

(curator: Tom Eccles) 

Momentum 5 th Nordic Biennial of 

Contemporary Art, Moss, Norway 

(curators: Lina Džuverović and Stina 

Högkvist) 

Back to the Future, ComA, 


Report on Probability, Kunsthalle 

Basel, Basel, Switzerland 

1989. Ende der Geschichte oder 

Beginn der Zukunft?, Kunsthalle Wien, 

Vienna, Austria 

(curators: Gerald Matt and 

Cathérine Hug) 

Goodbye to Romance 

Mercer Union, Toronto, Canada 

(curator: Elaine Gaito) 

2008 5 th Berlin Biennial, Berlin, Germany 

The Dulcet Clime of the Bedchamber, 

Goff & Rosenthal, Berlin, Germany 

Update, White Columns, 


The Hidden, Maureen Paley, 

London, UK 

PopShop, MU Gallery, 

Eindhoven, the Netherlands 

Medium Cool, Art in General, 


Soft Spot, 0047, Oslo, Norway 

Monumento Mori, Astrup Fearnley 

Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway 

(curator: Bastard) 

Nul, Foxy Production, 


Faire et Defaire C’est Toujours 

Travailler, Galerie West, 


Vårutstillingen 2008 

(2008 spring exhibition) 


2007 There Is Always A Machine Between 

Us, SF Cameraworks, 

San Francisco, CA, USA 

Love Me Or I’ll Kill You!, Norwegische 

Britische Freundschaft, 


Pastiche, Sølyst Slot/SAIr, 

Jyderup, Denmark 

EASt International, Norwich Gallery, 

Norwich, UK 

The Backroom/Société Anonyme, 

Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, France 

Peer In Peer Out, Scottsdale Museum 

of Contemporary Art, 

Scottsdale, AZ, USA; 

The Moore Space, FL, USA 

Robert Smithson/Vårutstillingen 

(spring exhibition), Fotogalleriet, 

Oslo, Norway 

The Corny Show, Karma International, 


2006 Cross My Heart, Torpedo 

Kunstbokhandel, Oslo, Norway 

Giving People What They Want, 

The Glass Box, Paris, France 

Bokaktig, Fotogalleriet, Oslo, Norway 

2005 The Atlantic, Kling & Bang, 

Reykjavik, Iceland 

The Annual Exhibition of the Visual 

Art (Høstutstillingen), Kunstnernes 

Hus, Oslo, Norway 

Everything I do, I do it for you, Projekt 

0047, Berlin, Germany 

2004 The city is the show, Salong 100, 

Oslo, Norway 

Vækerø Skulpturpark, Oslo, Norway 

2003 Jours lounges et nuit lumineuses, 

Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway 

SCREENINGS 

2009 23 rd London Lesbian & Gay Film 

Festival, London, UK 

Artists’ Film Club: Lars Laumann, ICA, 

London, UK 

Dark Fair, Kölnischer Kunstverein, 

Cologne, Germany 

Stadtkino Basel, Kunsthalle Basel, 

Basel, Switzerland 

Gets Under the Skin – contemporary 

videos and films on modernist 

architecture, Storefront for Art and 

Architecture, New York City, NY, USA 

Tramway, Glasgow, UK 

Goethe-Institut Portugal, 

Lisbon, Portugal 

Filmhuis den Haag, 

The Hague, the Netherlands 

2008 Gracelands Festival, Dromahair, 

Co. Leitrim, Ireland 

Spector, CrG Gallery, 


Monkey Town, 


2007 The Artist and the Computer, The 

Museum of Modern Art, 


Karma International, 


Basso, Berlin; Lost & Found, 


Åpent forum, Oslo National Academy 

of the Arts, Oslo, Norway 

East goes West, Mandrake Bar, 


171

172 

ThE JurY

OLAV CHRISTOPHER JENSSEN 

Born 1954 in Sortland, Norway 

Lives and works in Berlin, Germany 

Artist. Professor at Braunschweig University of Art, 

Braunschweig, Germany. 

1980–1981 The National Academy 

of Fine Arts, Oslo, Norway 

1976–1979 The National College 

of Art and Design, Oslo, Norway 

Olav Christopher Jenssen is one of Norway’s most internationally 

acclaimed figures on the contemporary art scene. 

Jenssen achieved his international breakthrough at 

Documenta IX, Kassel, Germany, in 1992. In 1997 he succeeded 

Sigmar Polke as professor of painting at the University of 

Fine Arts of Hamburg, Germany, a position he held until 

2003. In 2007 he took up the corresponding position at the 

Braunschweig University of Art in Braunschweig, Germany. 

Olav Christopher Jenssen was awarded the Willy Brandt 

Award in 2001 for his work to foster cooperation and cultural 

understanding between Norway and Germany. 

173

174 

GÖRAN CHRISTENSON 

Born 1947 in Harplinge, Sweden 

Lives and works in Malmö, Sweden 

Director of Malmö Art Museum, Malmö, Sweden 

1969–1974 Fil.kand., Lund University, Lund, Sweden 

Göran Christenson is an art historian and has been the director 

of Malmö Art Museum for the last 20 years. He has specialised 

in buying and exhibiting contemporary art. 

During his time at the museum he has built up one of the 

largest and most important collections of contemporary art by 

artists from the following countries: Sweden, Denmark, Norway, 

Finland and Iceland. 

He has worked as a curator for both old master, modern and 

contemporary exhibitions, is a member of the City of Malmö´s 

committee for public decoration and has been chairman of 

the IASPIS delegation (International Artists Studio Program In 

Sweden). 

He has also worked with the Lofoten International Art 

Festival (LIAF), in Lofoten, Norway, as both co-curator and 

member of the board. Göran Christenson a member of the 

international jury and also of the selection committee for 

DAK’Art, the Biennale of African Contemporary Art, in Senegal. 

SOLVEIG ØVSTEBØ 

Born 1973 in Chicago, IL, USA 

Lives and works in Bergen, Norway 

Director of Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway 

1998–2001 Cand. phil., art history, University 

of Bergen, Bergen, Norway 

Solveig Øvstebø is an art historian and curator and has been 

the director of Bergen Kunsthall since 2003, developing it into 

one of the main contemporary art institutions in Norway with a 

focus on production, research and discourse. 

She has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions, 

including Looking is Political: Nairy Baghramian, Bojan Sarcevic, 

Ane Hjort Guttu (2009), Sergej Jenssen (2008), Leibhaftige 

Malerei Jxxxa: Jutta Koether (2008), The Absence of Mark 

Manders (2007), Center of Gravity: Runa Islam (2007), Banks 

Violette (2007), Awakenings: Rodney Graham (2006), Shifting 

Shifting: Aernout Mik (2006) and The Welfare Show: 

Elmgreen & Dragset (2005). 

Øvstebø has also tutored in theory and art history at the art 

academies of Helsinki, Finland, and Bergen, Norway, and has 

written and lectured extensively on contemporary art. She is a 

board member of Arts Council Norway and was head organiser 

of the Bergen Biennnial Conference in Bergen, Norway, in 

September 2009.

CAROLINE M UGELSTAD 

Born 1972 in Oslo, Norway 

Lives and works in Oslo, Norway 

Chief curator at Henie Onstad Art Centre, Bærum, Norway 

1999–2002 Cand. philol., philosophy, University 

of Oslo, Oslo, Norway 

1998–1999 mA, art history, Courtauld Institute of 

Art, University of London, London, UK 

Ugelstad, who holds degrees in art history and philosophy, 

works as chief curator and head of the art department at Henie 

Onstad Art Centre. One of Norway’s major museums, the Henie 

Onstad Art Centre focuses on modernism, contemporary art and 

experimental music. 

Ugelstad has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions, 

including Jean Tinguely: The Future As We Remember It (2009), 

Reality Effects: When Reality is put to work (2008) (with Tone 

Hansen), Headlines & Footnotes (2008), Meret Oppenheim: 

Retrospektiv (2007) and From 60 To 7 – The Politics Of The 

Private (with Frank Lubbers) (2007). 

Ugelstad has written extensively on contemporary art for 

journals and newspapers and was editor of the publication 

Høvikodden Live: Henie Onstad Art Centre as cross cultural 

arena 1968-2007 (2007). She has also tutored and lectured in 

theory and art history at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts 

and was director at the Oslo Art Society, Oslo, Norway, 

from 2004 to 2005. 

ØYSTEIN USTVEDT 

Born 1965 in Oslo, Norway 

Lives and works in Oslo, Norway 

Curator at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and 

Design, Oslo, Norway 

1989–1994 Cand. philol., art history, University 

of Oslo, Oslo, Norway 

Øystein Ustvedt is an art historian and the author of numerous 

reviews, articles and books on art, including Olav Christopher 

Jenssen: Biographie – arbeider/works 1982-1997 (1997), Gilbert 

& George 1970-1997 (1999) and Collection: Astrup Fearnley 

Museum of Modern Art (1999) (with Hans-Jakob Brun 

and Jutta Nestegaard). 

From 1995 to 2002 he worked as curator at the Astrup 

Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, Norway, and from 

2002 to 2004 he was director of the Stenersen Museum in 

Oslo, Norway. Currently he is curator at the art department of the 

National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, Norway. 

Ustvedt has curated exhibitions of both contemporary artists 

and modern masters, including Bernd og Hilla Becher (2005), 

Edvard Munch. Det syke barn. Historien om et mesterverk 

(2009) and Matias Faldbakken. Shocked Into Abstraction. 

Utvalgte arbeider 2005-2009 (2009) at the National Museum 

of Art, Architecture and Design, and Bjarne Melgaard. More 

Pricks Than Kicks (1997) and Passasjér. Betrakteren som 

deltaker (2002) at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art. 

175

176 

ThE 

dEsIgnEr 

and ThE 

wrITErs

THE 

WRITERS 

DAVID LEWIS 

(American/Israeli, born 1976) 

Lewis is a writer, art critic and historian who has been living in 

Paris, France, since 2008. He contributes to a wide variety of 

art world publications, including Artforum, and to peer-reviewed 

academic journals such as Modernism/Modernity and 

The Journal of Visual Culture. In addition to his critical and 

scholarly writing, he is collaborating with various artists on a 

book about William Blake. 

STEFANIA PALUMBO 

(Italian, born 1978) 

Palumbo is an independent art critic and curator based in 

Berlin, Germany, who has worked with many Neapolitan cultural 

institutions. Since 2006 she has been co-curator of Supportico 

Lopez, an exhibition space founded in Naples, Italy, in 2003 

by Gigiotto Del Vecchio and now based in Berlin. From 2007 

to 2008 she oversaw exhibition programming for the Project 

Room at Museo Madre, Naples. Palumbo is a regular contributor 

to the contemporary art magazines Flash Art and Mousse. 

MARTA KUZMA 

(American, born 1964) 

Marta Kuzma is a writer, curator, and director of the Office for 

Contemporary Art Norway in Oslo since 2005. A postgraduate 

in Aesthetics and Art Theory from the Centre for Modern 

European Philosophy, Middlesex University, London, UK, and a 

graduate from Barnard College/Columbia University in New 

York City, NY, USA, Kuzma was co-curator of the 2004 European 

Biennale of Contemporary Art, Manifesta 5, in San Sebastian, 

Spain. Kuzma has taught and lectured at various leading 

institutions, including at the University IUAV of Venice, Italy. 

She contributes to the journals Radical Philosophy, Afterall, 

Art Review, and Artforum. 

KATHERINE WAUGH 

(Irish, born 1968) 

Waugh is a freelance writer, teacher, and filmmaker. 

She originally studied philosophy in Ireland, followed by further 

studies in modern French philosophy and critical theory at the 

University of London and Goldsmiths College. She has written 

for Voluntary Arts Ireland, Circa Art Magazine, and various film 

journals, and regularly writes essays for artists’ monographs. 

She has recently finished making a film on radical temporalities 

in contemporary art with film-writer and director 

Fergus Daly. In this film, The Art of Time, Waugh interviews 

leading international video artists, filmmakers and architects. 

In 2006 she co-produced Experimental Conversations, which 

explores the process of experimentation in film. 

She is also involved in the recently launched Different Directions 

experimental film festival in Ireland. 

THE 

DESIGNER 

STEFFEN KØRNER LUDVIGSEN 

(Norwegian, born 1990) 

Kørner Ludvigsen is a young, talented graphic designer based 

in Oslo, Norway. He began as an intern at the acclaimed design 

studio of Halvor Bodin and Claudia C Sandor (Oslo Collective 2) 

directly after graduating from upper secondary school in 2009. 

Kørner Ludvigsen runs his own design company. His typefaces 

have appeared in No Magazine and on the American tV channel 

Nickelodeon. He is currently working on several book projects. 

177

178 

FacTs and 

FIgurEs

The Statoil art award is intended to encourage and recognise 

young and emerging artists and to give them opportunities to 

continue their work. Eligible for the award are artists working 

in Norway (regardless of nationality) and Norwegian citizens 

working abroad. 

A jury comprising five experts on contemporary art convene 

every other year to identify the next talented person who 

deserves to win the Statoil art award. 

They consider a number of young and talented visual artists 

and draw up a list of 25 candidates. A short list of four nominees 

is then selected and invited to show their work in the Statoil art 

award nomination exhibition. 

The winner is announced during the exhibition. Worth NoK 

500.000 (about USD 80.000/EUr 60.000) the prize ranks as 

the biggest of its kind in Norway and is awarded in recognition 

of a special talent. 

2009 

tHE FoUr NomINEES 

Ida Ekblad, Marius Engh, Anawana Haloba, Lars Laumann 

tHE jUrY 

Olav Christopher Jenssen 

Artist and professor, Berlin, Germany (chair of the jury) 

Solveig Øvstebø 

Director of Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway 

Caroline M Ugelstad 

Chief curator at the Henie Onstad Art Center, Bærum, Norway 

Göran Christenson 

Director of Malmö Art Museum, Malmö, Sweden 

Øystein Ustvedt 

Curator at the National Museum of 

Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway 

StAtoIL Art AWArD tEAm 

Bjarne Våga, project leader and secretary to the jury 

Oddvar Høie, marketing manager, corporate communication 

Jens R Jenssen, senior vice president human resources 

tHE PrIZE 

NoK 500.000 

tHE SHoW 

The Statoil art award 2009 nomination exhibition 

Kunstnerforbundet Gallery for Contemporary Art 

Kjeld Stubs gate 3, Oslo, Norway 

27 November 2009–23 December 2009 

(curator: Olav Christopher Jenssen, chair of the jury) 

Rogaland Art Museum 

Henrik Ibsens gate 55, Stavanger, Norway 

February–April 2010 

2007 

tHE WINNEr 

Camilla Løw 

tHE jUrY’S StAtEmENt 

The jury has been inspired by the way she uses the contradictory 

forms of a room, and how she unites form and room with rhythm 

and harmony. Her use of the simple materials is technically 

advanced, but with clear references to the craft. 

Camilla Løw comments on a branch of the radical modernism 

in an honest and respectful manner, but still produces personal 

and playful results. She approaches a heavy tradition with great 

ease and creates her own platform, from where she can start 

again and find new approaches to a well-known art form. 

tHE FoUr NomINEES 

Bård Ask, Astrid J Johannessen, Camilla Løw, Jone Kvie 

tHE jUrY 

Sune Nordgren 

Director of Kivik Art Centre, Kivik, Sweden (chair of the jury) 

Sigrid Lien 

Professor of art history, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway 

Einar Børresen 

Art historian, Stavanger, Norway 

Wenche Volle 

Art historian, Oslo, Norway 

Steinar Elstrøm 

Artist, Oslo, Norway 

StAtoIL Art AWArD tEAm 

Wenche Falkenhaug, project leader 

Oddvar Høie, marketing manager, corporate communication 

Jens R Jenssen, senior vice president human resources 

Bjarne Våga, secretary to the jury 

tHE PrIZE 

NoK 400.000 cash and acquisition of works by the artist 

equivalent of NoK 100.000 

tHE SHoW 

The StatoilHydro art award 2007 nomination show 

Kunstnerforbundet Gallery for Contemporary Art 

Kjeld Stubs gate 3, Oslo, Norway 

1 December 2007–23 December 2007 

(curator: Sune Nordgren, chair of the jury) 

179

180

acknowlEdgEMEnTs 

181

182 

Missing data could unfortunately not 

be obtained before production 

IDA EKBLAD 

IMAGES 

15 If You Give To Me (manipulated) 

17 The Gold Bug Drift (NYC), Navy Yard, 

Connecticut, (manipulated) 

Courtesy of the artist and The Journal 

Gallery, New York City, NY, USA 

19 Installation view: The Journal Gallery 

(manipulated) 


Gallery, New York City, NY, USA. 

21 Ida Ekblad 

Photo: Tove Sivertsen 

24 Ida Ekblad 

Photo: Nils Bech 

26 Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds 

27 Political Song for 

Jessica Simpson to Sing 

28 Air Jordan #2 

Courtesy of The National Museum of 

Art, Norway 

31 The Gold Bug Drift (NYC), 

Rockaway Beach, Bed 



32 Installation view: Silver Ruins, 


34 Tyrian Purple 

35 Rockaway Beach, Bruce, 




Navy Yard, Connecticut 




Navy Yard, Plate 



38 A Woman Under the Influence 

Installation view: Frieze Art Fair, 

2009, London, UK 

Courtesy of Gaudel de Stampa, 

Paris, France 

39 The Gold Bug Drift 


Where You Might Be 

40 The Gold Bug Drift 


Tomorrow 

41 The Chief of Police 

42 Installation view: Europäisch- 

Amerikanische Freundschaft, 

Gavin Browns Enterprise, New York 

City, NY, USA 

44 A Flytrap and A Pettle 

45 Royal Festival Hall 


Navy Yard, Flower 




Rockaway Beach, Bottle 



47 Francis 

48 What Leaf, What Mushroom? 

Installation view: New Jerseyy, Basel, 

Switzerland 

TEXT 

34 FARE-YE-WELL 

Courtesy of the artist 

MARIUS ENGH 

IMAGES 

53 Europe (manipulated) 

Courtesy of the artist and StANDArD 

(oSLo), Oslo, Norway. 

Photo: Marius Engh 

55 Collar (manipulated) 



Photo: Frode Fjerdingstad 

57 Lead, Follow 


(manipulated), 1 of 14 




59 Marius Engh 

Photo: F Caravaca Belmonte 

61 Lycanthropic Chamber 




64 Pinstripes 

Courtesy of The National Museum 

of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, 

Norway 


66 Gulfstream V (1–4) 




68 Collar 




68 Pinstripes 

Courtesy of The National Museum 

of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, 

Norway 


69 Bars 

Courtesy of Acid Cats Foundation 

Oslo, Norway/London, UK 


69 Nightwatch 




69 Hotel California 




70 Saltire 




71 Defender Who Shall Not Be Seen 




72 Night Fall 




74–79 Lead, Follow 


5 of 14. Details 




81 Hermes 

Courtesy of the artist and 

Supportico Lopez 

Photo: Mario Prato 

82 Installation view: Europe, Fussorius, 

Rock Bottom, Peace Trails (Tent), 

Supportico Lopez, Berlin 




84 Holiday in Bosnia 




85 Rock Bottom 



Photo: Mario Prato

86, 87 Fussorius 




ANAWANA HALOBA 

IMAGES 

91 Whose Privacy? (manipulated) 

Photo: Sanghee Song 

93 Lamentation (manipulated) 

95 When the Private Became Public 

(manipulated) 

97 Anawana Haloba 

Photo: Lillian Jonassen 

100 Anawana Haloba 

Photo: Trond Isaksen 

104 Whose Privacy? 

Photo: Willem Wermaase 

106, 107 Whose Privacy? 

Photo: Sanghee Song 

108–111 Road Map 


112 The Greater G8 

Advertising Market Stand 

Photo: Wolfgang Günzel 

110 The Greater G8 

Advertising Market Stand 

Photo: Halvor Bodin 

117–119 When the Private Became Public 


120, 121 Lamentation 


122 Can You See…, Can You Hear… 


TEXT 

124 For The Acquaintance Of My Mind 


LARS LAUMANN 

IMAGES 

129, 131 Morrissey Foretelling 

the Death of Diana (manipulated) 

Courtesy of Maureen Paley, 

London, UK 

133 Berlinmuren (manipulated) 


London, UK 

135 Lars Laumann 

Photo: Benjamin Alexander Huseby 

139 Lars Laumann 

Photo: Chris Maluszynski 

142 Installation view: Morrissey Foretelling 


Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland, 

as part of the exhibition Report on 

Probability, 2009 


London, UK 




London, UK 


the Death of Diana Fanzine, for White 

Columns, New York City, NY, USA 


London, UK 

149 Installation view: Swedish Book Store 

Galway Arts Centre, as part of the 

Galway Arts Festival, 

Galway, Ireland, 2009 


London, UK 

150, 151 Swedish Book Store 


London, UK 

153 Installation view: Berlinmuren 

Marian Goodman Gallery, New York 

City, NY, USA, as part of the exhibition 

As Long As It Lasts, 2009 

Courtesy of Maureen Paley, London, UK 

154–155 Berlinmuren 


London, UK 

156 Installation view: 

Shut up Child, This Ain’t Bingo 

Maureen Paley, London, UK 2009 

Courtesy of Maureen Paley, London, UK 

158–161 Shut up Child, This Ain’t Bingo 


London, UK 

162–163 You Can’t Pretend To Be 

Somebody Else – You Already Are 

Stills and production photos, 2009 

Courtesy of Lars Laumann and 

Benjamin A Huseby 

THE JURY 

173 Olav Christopher Jenssen 

Photo: David Burke, Statoil 

174 Göran Christenson 

Photo: Andreas Nilsson 

174 Solveig Øvstebø 

Photo: Helge Hansen, Statoil 

175 Caroline M Ugelstad 

Photo: Trond Isaksen, Statoil 

175 Øystein Ustvedt 

Photo: Trond Isaksen, Statoil 

183

©Statoil 2009 

EDItorS 


Bjarne Våga 

ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDItor 

Gail Adams Kvam 

GrAPHIC DESIGN, Art DIrECtIoN 

Steffen Kørner Ludvigsen 

DESIGN CoNSULtANtS 

Halvor Bodin 

Claudia C Sandor 

Visual Design, Statoil 

CoLoUr rEProDUCtIoN 

Gabriele Letzner, Kai Hansen AS 

PrINtING 

Kai Hansen AS 

tYPEFACE 

Statoil Sans, Statoil Display 

PAPEr 

Skandia 2000, 150 g/m 2 

Curious Translucents Clear, 92 g/m 2 

Invercote G, 350 g/m 2 

ISBN: 978-82-92940-02-0 

www.statoil.com/artprogramme

185

Ida Ekblad MarIus Engh anawana haloba lars lauMann - Statoil

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