Maia Birkeland: "What we have in store"
Photo: Thomas Lyd
This year's festival exhibition is spread across three different locations; an art museum, a cultural history museum and out in the public city space. This is not a coincidence. With this placement, I want to draw lines and references – between the content of the different works and the contexts in which they are located.
Designations such as past, present, future are fleeting. They are constantly changing, from year to year, from century to century. In each designation of time there is an individual, each with their own identity and each with their own everyday life. The same applies to a place, a space, a city – it too has its own form of everyday life and identity.
In our time, many people have the opportunity to choose and build parts of their identity themselves. For example, a community can decide that part of its identity is to take care of its fjords. That clean fjords are something they want to have in common, with those who have their daily lives now, and with those who have their daily lives in the future.
Maia Birkeland (b.1978) is educated at the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts and the Glasgow School of Art, with a master's degree in Medium and Material-Based Art from 2015. Through textiles, text, sculpture and installation, she works with themes that revolve around the mutual influence between people - people, city - people and people - city.