2020

Maria Pasenau

Maria Pasenau (B. 1994 in Mjøndalen, lives and works in Odda and in Oslo). For Coast Contemporary´s fourth edition Pasenau presented a series of new commissions consisting of photography and paintings installed in Lavetthuset at Hovedøya. Pasenau also participated in an artist talk with photographer Nicole Rafiki.

In 2018 Pasenau published her first photo book Whit Kind Regrets Pasenau. In 2019 in connection with her exhibition at Fotogalleriet, she published her second photo book Pasenau and the Devil, and in 2020 her third book THE HOPLESNESS OF BEEING ALIVE.

She is one of the youngest artists to have had work acquired by the Norwegian National Museum for their permanent collection.

Esra Düzen

Esra Düzen presented a comic story about transition and adaptation to motherhood and change in human life for Coasts fourth edition, and she gave a self presentation at Hovedøya.

In my practice I reinterpret societal norms, rituals, language, and my cultural heritage through modes of speculative storytelling, symbolism and myth making. These narratives take place in an alternative reality where my characters imitate our human experiences. Through this subversion of our reality I try to create a new perspective and language. I prefer to turn drama into a painful laughter by going to the bottom of it.

Jennie Bringaker

Bringaker presented the new sculptures series “Number 1-9”, commissioned for Coasts fourth edition, relating to Hovedøya island’s history, she also participated in an artist talk with gallerist Jenny Kinge and Kinges gallery FEMTENSESSE.

I work in the field of figurative sculpture employing a range of different media such as stone, earthenware, textiles, and metal. The works are motivated by personal experiences but are also inspired by ancient fertility cults and how these manifested themselves in sculpture, relief, and murals. The exhibition space plays an important part in the development of both the concepts and the design of my works, and I consider my sculptures performative actors in the space, frozen in time.

Ane Barstad Solvang

Ane Barstad Solvang was our resident artist in 2020, and she developed a series of new paintings and a performance for the fourth edition.

Ane Barstad Solvang works with painting, text, and comics. Her graphic novel Fear & Pity was published by No Comprendo Press in 2018. The work explores the use of dark comedy to release social tension resulting from keeping both a child and a grotesque birth a secret.

Zoë Miller

Miller co-founded the Berlin Art Prize in 2013 and the Society for Matriarchal World Domination in 2019 and contributed with posterst from the SWWD-series. Zoë could not join us in Oslo, as all travel was Covid-cancelled.

Much of her political work takes place within the framework of bbk berlin (the professional association for visual artists in Berlin), for which she is a spokesperson. bbk berlin focuses primarily on political issues pertaining to artists’ rights, working conditions and infrastructure on both local and national levels, but is also engaged in related issues and struggles, such as those of gender equality, antigentrification and antifascism.

Lene Baadsvig Ørmen

Baadsvig Ørmen presented three new commissioned sound sculptures for the fourth edition of Coast Contemporary, in collaboration with Peder Simonsen, in the monastery ruins.

Peder Simonsen composed a site specific sound installation with basis in the harmonic content of the materials used in Ørmens sculptures.

Ørmen and Simonsen also contributed with two public listening walks with servings and “meet the artists” at Hovedøya. – From a distance, this was the first year of Covid, after all…

Wencke Mühleisen

Wencke Mühleisen is a Norwegian-Austrian writer, gender and media studies scholar, and former performance artist, who currently works as an independent scholar and writer. The primary focus of Wencke Mühleisens media studies research is the field of queer theory and perspectives on gender and sexuality.

Mühleisen participated in a conversation with Art Historian and the curator of the exhibition SYKLUS, Una Mathisen Gjerde, about their collaboration in SYKLUS, age and menopause, and Mühleisen’s latest book Redd deg selv, lille hjerte, published in the spring of 2020.

Tonje Bøe Birkeland

Birkeland works with photography and installation. Through THE CHARACTERS, she has given women a position within the landscape while exploring the authenticity of history.

While the romantic motives of the male wanderer have been well-documented, in Birkeland’s project, female explorers are staged in Unknown Territory. In front of the heroine looms a grand exploration; beneath her, history is formed.

Tonje contributed with her book THE CARACHTERS and a self presentation at Hovedøya.

Olivia Hernaïz

Hernaïz board game ART & MY CAREER (L’ART & MA CARRIÈRE) was presented during our fourth edition.

Addressing the issue of under-representation of women in the art world, the board game Art & My Career, based on hundred of testimonies, features different careers in the art world. From artist to museum curator, players are invited to put themselves in their shoes in order to better understand their struggle.

Olivia could not join us due to cancellation of all travels during Covid.

Kristin Tårnesvik

The artists Åse Løvgren and Kristin Tårnesvik participated with the sound walk Oceanus Tale, made in collaboration for Coasts fourth edition.

Throughout her artistic practice Tårnesvik has consistently sought out new media and techniques to provide resistance in the production process and lead to new movements in unexpected directions.

Nicole Rafiki

Nicole Rafiki is a visual artist, writer, and editor. She contributed with a series of selected photography and in an artist talk with colleague Maria Pasenau.

Rafiki´s experiences with migration and exile are the inspiration and driving force behind her art. As an interdisciplinary artist, she uses symbolism to re-imagine and challenge stereotypical depictions of the spaces, contexts, and identities of people who are affected by Global Migration.

Mona Holm

Mona Holm is a curator at NMF and museum director at the Women’s Museum in Kongsvinger. Holm is a co-founder of The International Association of Women’s Museums (IAWM), 2012, and has since served on IAWM’s board, and since 2016 as president.

Holm was the project manager for the exhibition HYSJ! Stories about abortion and sexuality

Holm contributed with a presentation of IAWM and the upcoming program at the Womans Museum, together with Thea Aarbakke.

Una Mathiesen Gjerde

Una Mathiesen Gjerde is a producer, critic, and curator. Gjerde participated in a conversation with artist Wencke Mühleisen and presented the project SYKLUS during Coasts fourth edition.

SYKLUS is an on-going research project, focusing on female bodies and bodily fluids in art, especially menstruation, as a concrete artistic tool and a symbol of female abjection.

Through the inclusion of female artists from different generations and practices, SYKLUS aims to tell multiple stories of menstrual experience, of both being and not being menstrual, and how this relates to the experience of feeling – or not feeling – female. SYKLUS demonstrate the diversity within Scandinavian menstrual art.

Marin Håskjold

Håskjolds contributed with her latest film What is a woman? during Constructing Structures at Hovedøya. The film aims to explore existential questions regarding gender and identity. Marin was also a part of SYKLUS with an installation the film “Talkshow” – a film about menstruation (2020). SYKLUS was curated by Una Mathisen Gjerde.

What is a woman? is about a discussion that occurs in a woman’s locker room when someone asks a transgender woman to leave. Issues concerning gender and trans’ rights bring to light philosophical questions inscribed in societal structures dictating our everyday life and behavior regarding the perception of our bodies. The film asks: Who can define who is a woman and who is not? Is gender biologically or socially conditioned?

Anne Karin Jortveit

Jortveit participated with a hand spun and woven warp and a studio visit. Her studio is located in Lavetthuset, the building we were in.

A concept that has started to appear in public recently, and which has also become part of my own artistic vocabulary, is ecological grief. Grief can be associated with powerlessness and the absence of action, but for me this concept is first and foremost connected to something strong and productive.

When we face the loss of nature, we are not alone.

Fatal ecological changes affect everyone. In this sense, ecological grief is as collective as it is individual. This can inspire new dialogues and conversations.

Åse Løvgren

The artists Kristin Tårnesvik and Åse Løvgren participated in Coast Contemporary with the sound walk Oceanus Tale developed in collaboration and with an artist talk with curator Marte Danielsen Jølbo.

Åse Løvgren is an artist working with a wide range of strategies and formats, often with collaboration at the core. Her current project The Valley, in collaboration with artist Stine Gonsholt, uses a rural setting on the west coast of Norway as a prism for viewing transitions in global production and economy and how this alters our understanding of the meaning of place.

Recently a server farm was established inside an old textile factory, mining for Bitcoin.

Ingunn Hvalø Hansen

Janine Magelssen

Karen Nikgol

Magnhild Øen Nordahl

Inger Johanne Rasmussen

Peder Simonsen

Kari Steihaug

Anne-Lise Stenseth

Janne Wilberg