Miriam Hansen

Miriam Hansen (b.1988) lives and works in Oslo. She works with installation and sculpture. Her artistic practice emerges from an interest in humanity’s relation to botanical matter, through medical history, cultural heritage and plants as spiritual subjects/deities. Intertwining this historic material with oral traditions and myths, forum-posted trip-reports and the soothing confidence propagated by the wellness industry, her practice looks into questions of healing and legality, as well as morality and the idea of “the holistic” in contemporary society.

Øvelser i samhandling. Two flies, home grown Virginia-tobacco and cigarette case. Detail from site-specific sculpture by Miriam Hansen and Andreas Olavssønn Rongen, installed in the office building at Velferden as a part of Mutant Prospects. Photo by Tiny Productions for Coast Contemporary.

Through a site-specific approach she works with installations that accommodates for cycles of growth and decay. Her practice is inherently process-based, where material structures are based on cycles of cultivation, foraging, infusion, diffusing and waiting. The term «environment» has become a strategy for mediating habitation of spaces, both in facilitating for living material, but also in how atmospheric altercations plays in to the bodily experience of a space.

Øvelser i samhandling. Site-specific sculpture by Miriam Hansen and Andreas Olavssønn Rongen, installed in the office building at Velferden as a part of Mutant Prospects. Photo by Tiny Productions for Coast Contemporary.

Øvelser i samhandling. File cabinet. Site-specific sculpture by Miriam Hansen and Andreas Olavssønn Rongen, installed in the office building at Velferden as a part of Mutant Prospects. Photo by Tiny Productions for Coast Contemporary.

For Coast Contemporary, she performed a collaborative project together with artist Andreas Olavssønn Rongen. Together they have been developing a sculptural logic of infusion and absorption, and performed the finalization of a sculptural work produced for Velferden by infusing it with home grown Virginia tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) in a purpose built smoking chamber. Envisioned as a durational performance as the evening draws to a close, the performance flirts with social situations of respite, such as a smoke break or an after-work. The project emerges from their converging interests in the intersections between sculpture, architecture and performative expressions, and the collaborative effort of caring for plants they’ve cultivated together in their home, on their balcony and in their studio over the years.

States of perpetual relief Copper pipes, monofilament, tin, silver, latex, opium, poppies (Papaver somniferum). Photo: Tor S. Ulstein / KUNSTDOK

Miriam Hansen presenting with Andreas Olavssønn ROngen at Sogndalstrand kulturhotell. Photo by Tiny Productions for Coast Contemporary.

Hansen holds a BFA and MFA from Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Her work has recently been exhibited at The National Museum (2025), The Norwegian Sculptors Society (2025), Kunstnerforbundet (2023), Podium (2023), UKS (2022), Babel (2022), Hulias (2021) and The Astrup Fearnley Museum (2019)."