The exhibition The Micro Challenge presents two art projects under a common theme. What are the global health challenges of our time? And how can we respond to these challenges?
Ane Graff creates sculptures that highlight the connection between pollutants in our local environment and various autoimmune diseases, while the artist duo Aksnes & Moen will create a site-specific work with the theme of antibiotic resistance that also relates to Gråmølna's history.
Read more about Ane Graff
Ane Graff was born in Bodø in 1974 and lives and works in Oslo. She was educated at Vestlandets Kunstakademi, Bergen (2000-2004). Graff is currently a research fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo, affiliated with the Program for Artistic Development. In 2018, Graff initiated a collaboration with the Department of Biosciences at the University of Oslo (UiO), where she participated in laboratory courses and lectures in microbiology.
Ane Graff combines knowledge from art, philosophy and science into a study of materiality.
She works with sculpture and installations, often with picturesque qualities. Graff questions the thinking of Western culture on what materiality is, with emphasis on interaction, relationships and process. In her work, the individual is not understood as a separate entity, but deeply entangled with, and influenced by, the physical world.
Graff’s works are inspired by the natural sciences and she is particularly concerned with microbiology and chemistry. Health is a key issue in the work, such as how the environment can affect how genes are expressed, human bacterial flora and systemic inflammatory reactions in the body.
Recent exhibitions include "Soon Enough: Art in Action", Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2018); “Myths of the Marble”, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2017); the 11th Gwangju Biennale “The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do?)”, Gwangju (2016); and“Surround Audience -The New Museum Triennial 2015", NY (2015).
Ane Graff is part of the upcoming exhibition "Weather Report–Forecasting Future", at the Nordic Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale (curated by Leevi Haapala and Piia Oksanen from KIASMA).
Read more about Aksnes & Moen
Aksnes & Moen consists of Beret Aksnes and Vegar Moen, have collaborated on various art projects in the public space since 2008. Their work focuses on using opportunities arising from the public space to ask important questions, engage and surprise.
Recent projects includes Fluehjerne (2018), an extensive work on the facade of the Faculty of Health Sciences, the University of Tromsø, a wall work on the facades of a four-storey high-rise house for recovering drug addicts in Jarleveien (2017), Trondheim, and Måneferd (2017), Voksen primary school , Oslo.
Beret Aksnes was born in Fredrikstad in 1952 and lives and works in Trondheim.
She is educated at the Bergen National Academy of the Arts, Department of Textiles (1975-1979).
Aksnes has worked with various techniques and materials, with emphasis on textiles, drawing and digital printing. She makes large, monumental and three-dimensional works, often with textile or drawing on her paintings.
Central in Aksnes' artistic work is the interest in pattern and pattern formation and how this is described, visualised and explained in various scientific contexts. Patterns can be found in everything from strictly repetitive designs to organic processes and systems that include change, coincidence and pattern fractures. What defines a pattern and where do the boundaries go against a non-pattern? These have been important issues for Aksnes, who has based her work on mathematics since 1976.
In addition to a number of art projects in collaboration with Vegar Moen, a recent solo exhibition is “pi” (2015), Trondheim Art Museum.
Beret Aksnes' works can be found in several private collections and public museums.
Vegar Moen was born in Røros (1967) and lives and works in Malmö. He is educated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Trondheim (1993-1998). He works mainly with analog photography, portraits, landscapes and architecture.
Moen is concerned with urbanization and urban development and its impact on nature. He has, among other things, photographed the world's largest dam and hydropower plant in the Yangtze River in China, the Three Gorges Dam, when it was under construction and the new railway between China and Tibet when it was built. His latest photo series is from Sweden's so-called lost areas: 61 districts that the police call risk zones, where crime is higher than in the rest of the country. Moen visited all the districts with his old portrait camera (1917) and took pictures of the people who approached him. The photo series consists of 61 portraits of these people.
In addition to a number of art projects in collaboration with Beret Aksnes, Moen has recently had several separate exhibitions, including at the Art Museum Trøndelag Nord (2019), Rørosmuseet (2019), Bodø Art Association (2018), Trøndelag Center for Contemporary Art 2016 and Vestfold Art Center 2016 and Akershus Art Center (2015). Recent group exhibitions include Jimei X Arles, Xiamen, China (2015) The spring exhibition (2015), Fotogalleriet, Oslo, 2015 and Paradis (2014), Trøndelag center for contemporary art.
Vegar Moen's photographic work can be found in several private collections and public museums in Norway and Sweden.
- 1/2
- 2/2
