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Photo: Lili Zaneta/TKM.
Tobias Liljedahl chose the painting Lerfallet in Verdalen (1893) by Herman Wedel Anker for his Artist's choice in 2018. The motif describes the landslide in Verdal during pentecost in 1893 which Anker experienced on a study trip. 116 people died. Liljedahl was interested in the painting as a kind of intermediary between the landscape painting and the news picture.
Using text and image searches online, Liljedahl analyzed Anker's painting through historical sources for the landslide and the visual characteristics that this painting shares with other landscape paintings. In this room he has selected Norwegian landscapes where it is up to the viewer whether one chooses to see them “with an everyday, or a dreamy exoticizing eye”.
Two works in this room challenge the landscape paintings. The voice in Ayatgali Tuleubek's Atoll, Bay, Beach (2018) recites landscape types alphabetically over stock photos. Their standardized beauty provides a comical critique of the conventions of landscape imagery. Castro/Ólafsson's Your country does not exist (2014) is a bold political assertion, provocative to some, trivial to others, and something else entirely to those who have lost everything.
