Ina Hagen
Ina Hagen is an artist and writer living and working in Oslo, Norway. In her artistic practice, that spans video and digital media, text and printed matter, communal making practices and pedagogical forms, Hagen constructs platforms and performative situations for critical reflection on hegemonic narratives, with an interest in the artistic process as a form of civic participation. Her work has been exhibited at, among others, Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo (2023), Bergen Kunsthall (2021), Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven (2021), the Nordic Biennale 'MOMENTUM', Moss (2019), Index—The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm (2019), Altan, Brudaholen (2021), and INCA, Seattle, WA (US) (2016). Hagen holds a BFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and participated in the Maumaus Independent Study Program in Lisbon in 2021. She has been selected artist in residence at WIELS Contemporary Art Center (BE), IASPIS, Stockholm (SE), Capacete, Rio de Janeiro (BR), Hangar, Lisbon (PT), and BAR Project, Barcelona (ES), among others. From 2016-2020, Hagen ran the discursive platform and exhibition venue 'Louise Dany' in Oslo with artist Daisuke Kosugi, from their home and adjacent storefront. She is currently partaking in a GRASS Fellowship at the Baltic Art Center, Gotland, Sweden.
FIRE NATION (2021) Video with audio 39:55 mins
In Fire Nation, Ina Hagen engages with the rebranding of the Norwegian state-owned energy company Statoil to Equinor in 2018, and the accompanying expansion to so-called "broad energy". By changing its name at the cost of about 250 million kroner, the company sought to relaunch with a future-oriented, socially and ecologically conscious image.
Equinor is among the world's largest net sellers of crude oil. It is, by oil extraction volume, the largest international company operating in Brazil today, which is projected to be one of the top five oil producing areas in the world by 2030. 82 percent of this production is in "ultra-deep water" (at depths of more than 1500 meters).
Fire Nation was inspired by the paradoxical condition of Norway's self-image, which relies heavily on stated ideals of fairness and environmental stewardship, while simultaneously operating as one of the largest energy miners in Brazil; an environment it explicitly claims to protect through government-backed initiatives such as the Rainforest Fund.
The work deconstructs a single promotional video made by Equinor in 2018 through conversations about climate optics, colonial exploitation, power and powerlessness. These images and conversations are set against the backdrop of a field recording from Praça Mauá square in Rio de Janeiro. This soundtrack documents a July morning during the COVID19 pandemic on Praça Mauá, an area now populated with museums like Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), of which Equinor is a main sponsor. In the early 19th century, Praça Mauá was the location fro Valongo Wharf, the port that served as the landing point for hundreds of thousands of enslaved people, largely from Angola, East and Central West Africa, when Rio de Janeiro was a main hub for the transatlantic slave trade. At that time, Norway rose to become the third largest shipping nation in the world by specializing in the shipment of natural resources.
In the last 10 years—as we have seen an unprecedented spike in the sales of off-shore oil fields outside of Rio de Janeiro to international companies, including to Equinor, under the administration of former president Jair Bolsonaro—it has been widely predicted that the "Norwegian Oil Adventure's second chapter" will be written across the Atlantic.
Today, Equinor has operations in more than 30 countries besides Brazil, among them Angola, Algeria, and Tanzania. Fire Nation poses the question of what role so-called 'soft values' play in racial capitalism, and in the ongoing environmental devastation in its wake.
Patricia Carolina
Patricia Carolina is an artist working primarily with textile, text and video installations. Intricately weaving together movement and language, grief and growth, her practice follows the relation between water, underground structures and the domestic landscapes that we inhabit. Carolina was born and raised in Mexico, and currently lives in Oslo. She graduated from the Iceland University of the Arts (BA 2019), and Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo (MFA 2022). Her works have been shown in Norway, Finland, Mexico, Estonia, Brazil and Iceland. Carolina is also an active member of the mutual support network 'Verdensrommet' which promotes collaboration, shares tools and advocates for better working conditions for non-EU/EEA artists in Norway.
Veins of a City, 2024 Video and sound 11'12"
These body fluids, this defilement, this shit are what life withstands, hardly and with difficulty, on the part of death. There, I am at the border of my condition as a living being. My body extricates itself, as being alive, from that border. Such wastes drop so that I might live, until, from loss to loss, nothing remains in me [...] It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite. Julia Kristeva. Powers of Horror. An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press. 1982. p. 3
'Everything converges' from the mouth in a body to the mouth of a river. With a deep interest in the insights of places that have been transformed by extensive modernization endeavors, the film intertwines flows of water, progress and loss. Images that register various sanitation plants and wastewater sites in Mexico City amidst an ongoing hydric crisis, as the artist looks for traces of the twenty rivers piped, buried and lost under cars and concrete. Just their names remain.
This work was developed in dialogue with composer Cisser Maehl
Marius Presterud
Marius Presterud (b. 1980, Drammen) is a Norwegian artist working across sculpture, poetry, performance, and ecological intervention. He has toured extensively as a poet and been shown at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Galleri F15, Kunstnernes Hus, Kjøpmannsgata Ung Kunst, and the Association of Norwegian Sculptors in Norway; Kunsthalle Vienna in Austria; and Hamburger Bahnhof in Germany, among others.
IG: @gothbeekeeping
Untitled (Prop, Nature as History (2021) Descr.: Installation Dim.: 125x24x20cm
Flickering ghostly, a commercial sign promoting green entrepreneurship—a relic of a future that never arrived.
Though seeming to possess a life of its own, the sign is merely reactive, extinguishing itself in response to an audience.
Its light retreats rather than illuminates, suggesting that our very attention contributes to the unraveling of what it claims to promote.
A glimmer of ecological hope that dims in the presence of its observers.
Marte Eknæs
Marte Eknæs www.marteeknaes.info, formsofflexibility.space beskriver sin praksis som kontekstbasert, og utfordrer forholdet og grensen mellom kunst og kontekst. Hun og bruker kunsten som et verktøy for å undersøke, forstyrre og endre forholdene rundt oss – både innenfor og utenfor kunstrommet. Uttrykket hennes omfatter skulptur, digital collage, tekst og video. Hun arbeider ofte i samarbeid med andre kunstnere og tverrfaglig. I mai 2025 ferdigstilte Eknæs sitt PhD prosjekt Active Forms: The Artwork and its Infrastructures ved Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo.
Michael Amstad
Michael Amstad er en filmskaper og animatør som arbeider på tvers av kunst, musikk og film i ulike samarbeid. Hans praksis spanner over kortfilmer, videoinstallasjoner og musikkvideoer, hvor han vever sammen dokumentarmateriale og forskjellige former for animasjon. Som en del av kollektivet Hylas Film lager
Lifeworld, 2025 13:00 mins.
Begrepet «livsverden» beskriver bevisste veseners umiddelbare opplevelse av vår delte verden. Det dreier seg ikke om en eksklusiv sfære, men vår individuelle tilstedeværelse i verden vi lever i sammen. En livsverden kan krympes eller utvides. I denne videoen gis kunstverket Inflatable et indre og ytre liv – og en egen stemme. Inflatable følges i sin tvil om egen evne til å bidra til samfunnsendring, og i dens drømmer om en vei ut av tilværelsen som utstillingsobjekt. Underveis spør den om råd fra kunstner og samarbeidspartner Nicolau Vergueiro, og arkitekt og forfatter Keller Easterling.
