The three institutions work with different methods targeting the connection between art, architecture, public space and urban planning. This common interest has built the foundation for a collaboration focused on the role of art in neighborhoods.

The thematic angle connects to Oslo Architecture Triennale’s focus on neighborhoods, especially on how art and artists can explore neighborhoods as a space to rethink how we can create better community places in our cities. Through the exhibition and various events, we present 16 projects, exploring our shared surroundings. Most of the projects revolve around the neighborhood encompassing ROM at Maridalsveien 3, while some of the projects stretch out to other districts, from Stovner, Vålerenga and Gamlebyen to Jeløya outside of Moss. The artists question, speculate and show care and consideration in their meetings with the surroundings, people and nature in the different neighborhoods. Several of the projects invite the public to actively participate in their process. They are generous, sensitive and clear in their wish to push forward perspectives rarely included in the public discussion. Maybe that is exactly why artistic perspectives are so valuable, because they make us think about the world and see it in a different light.

Many of the projects are based on our Open Call previous this year. You can also read more about Oslo Archtitecture Triennale HERE. ROM has received support from KORO and the Culture Council.

About the artists:

Jessica Williams was born 1986 in Anchorage, Alaska. She studied at The Cooper Union in New York, USA, Malmö Art Academy, Sweden, and Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Now she lives and works in Moss. Jessica Williams collects objects from everyday life, which are then processed and refined. Through language, aesthetic collections, and tragicomedy, Williams’ work examines themes such as identity and humans’ relationship with nature, consumption, and technology. Collaboration across disciplines and media is an essential part of her work. Although her practice is firmly rooted in self-publishing and experimental artist books, she also works with photography, video, sculpture, and VR.

Tom Teulon (b. 1992) and Trude Bekk (b. 1989) are an artist duo who have been working together since the autumn of 2020. Tom is a British Architect with a MArch from London Metropolitan University, Trude is a Norwegian Artist with an MA from Trondheim Academy of Fine Art. Their work utilises advanced digital technologies and real time visual effects to create multi-sensory artworks exploring human - non-human entanglement. Their ongoing project 'Sublime Synaesthesia' aims to expose overlooked ecological narratives through site specific immersive experiences. The project is supported by BKV (Norwegian Visual Artists Fund).

Visual artist and filmmaker Aleksander Johan Andreassen (b.1982, Bodø, Norway) lives in Oslo, Norway. Aleksander Johan Andreassen’s collaborations and open-ended performances draw attention to the subtle ways in which public and semi-public spaces influence human behavior. Engaging performers, choreographers, filmmakers, writers, and artists, as well as family members and non-artists, he intervenes in city streets and shopping malls in the hopes of eliciting critical or disruptive ways of perceiving and interacting with the built environment. Aleksander's work has been featured in exhibitions and film festivals on a national and international scale including the AC Institute in New York, USA; The 63rd International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in Oberhausen, DE. Aleksander holds a MFA from Konstfack University College in Stockholm, SE, and is currently undertaking a research residency at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, NL.

Lexie Owen (b 1982, Canada) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores notions of the collective, structures of support and networks of care. Using artistic, curatorial and textual methods her projects seek to create space for intimacies in unexpected ways, investigate the material conditions that surround collective acts, and find unconventional expressions of agency within the gestures and social forms that make up everyday life.

Metonymy Garden is a collaborative project developed by Ana Brotas (PT) and Viviana Cárdenas (CO). With a background in pedagogy, they examine the fictional capacity of landscapes through participatory interventions, collective-making, speculative storytelling, and performative installations. Together, they have developed research work at the Historical Pavillion in Hvervenbukta, an initiative organized by Vibeke Frost Andersen; and at the Wide Space residency in Portugal, a collaboration with Karina Sletten part of the multidisciplinary project Malacate supported by the EEA Grants. Brotas and Cárdenas hold an MFA in Art and Public Space from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, for which they have been awarded grants respectively from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and ICETEX.

Performance in an Attempt (by Maté Labus [HU] & Erina Kawachi [JP]) is an artists' duo producing a series of collective performing experiments with sounds and body movements, founded in March 2020, right after the pandemic started, with the aim of reevaluating the relationship between body/space and revealing a mutual narrative through gestures and the joy of performing.

"I do not pursue any goal, no system, no tendency. I have no program, no style, no direction. I steer clear of definitions. I do not know what I want. I am inconsistent, non-committal, passive. I like the indefinite, the boundless, continuous uncertainty". Runa Sandnes (b. 1975, Oslo) lives and works in Oslo. She has a master degree from Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2002). Upcoming exhibitions at Kunsthall Oslo (2022) and Small Projects, Tromsø (2023). Some of her more recent exhibitions have been at the Norwegian Sculpture Triennale, Oslo (2021), Norwegian Sculpture Biennale, Oslo (2015), Skulpturarena öst, Oslo (2015), Galleri 69, Oslo (2015) and Tenthaus,Oslo (2015), Norsk Billedhoggerforening, Oslo (2013), Sekkefabrikken, Slemmestad (2013) and Dortmund Bodega, Oslo (2013). Galleri Maria Veie, Oslo (2013)

Karina Sletten (b.1993, NO) is an interdisciplinary artist working with sound, performance, video, and relational aesthetics. Her projects revolve around the architectural intersections of how humans, nature, and objects of human design coexist, often using abandoned spaces as performative sites or objects for further exploration. Sletten's background in radio lends her works a narrative style, where messages and reflections are often integrated into the artwork as an interactive tool. Recently, Sletten has been engaged in a larger investigation of the physical and social properties of ruins, exploring various scales of work related to what she describes as ruin constructions—ecological and technological excavations into contemporary issues. This can involve the eradication of Norwegian rainforests, historical changes in housing policies, safety in public spaces, and the transformative impact of hostile architecture on socio-geographic patterns in the city. Sletten has recently had residencies at Notam Center for Electronic Art in Oslo, Wide Space – Projeto Malacate in Portugal, and the Summer Academy at Hordaland Art Center in Bergen. Sletten holds an MFA in Art and Public Space from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

Amina Baker Shubar (b. 1988) is a visual artist and illustrator. In her practice, Amina is keen to research at meeting points between knowledge, power and culture. How power and culture affect nature and our society on different levels. Baker Shubar works mostly with sculpture, photography, drawing and installations. Baker Shubar is currently undertaking the last year in her MFA in Art and Public Space at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

Sarah S. has finished her education at Bergen and Oslo’s Art Academies. Her works have recently been shown at Hordaland Art Centre, Nitja Centre for Contemporary Art and Galleri F15. In 2021, she received The Relief Fund for Visual Artists art student scholarship. In addition, she is the founder and curator of the exhibition platform and the artist network Vandrestaven Udstillingspunkt. The first thirteen years of S.’s life took place in a nomadic, medieval re-enactment group that traveled through the north of Europe performing at medieval fortresses and destinations. She herself has stated that ‘I was quite old before I understood that the medieval age was not a physical place or something you did, but an era’. Since then, the divide between time and traditions has defined her artistic practice, which revolves around crafts that forms a direct connection to plants, animals, as well as powerful femininity and witchcraft.

Sarah Sekles is a German-Brazilian aspiring artist, with a background in product design. Her artistic and scholarly practice is an ever-evolving, research based and site-specific mixture, that seeks to understand the potentialities of art and their social applications. Her process consists of personal memories and the connection to her origin and heritage, focusing on historical happenings and made tangible through different materials and mediums, whilst imagining spaces as resources and starting points of her artistic work. Sekles is currently pursuing an MFA in Art and Public Space at the Oslo National University of Arts. In the past she has worked as an artist assistant as well as a freelance designer on several commissioned projects.

In El Khoury’s practice, ecological sensitivity, politics, architecture, and heritage come together in pursuit of healing. The medium and techniques are constantly metamorphosing in response to the serendipities and contexts he encounters. Always with a sense of urgency and site-specifcity, his projects vary from static visual installations to socially engaged practices. After completing his Master’s degree in Architecture at the Lebanese University, he installed public artworks in several countries. He later joined the Oslo National Academy of Arts and completed his MFA in Art and Public Space in Spring 2022.

Amalie Risom Nyrup (b. 1994) is a visual artist who works to cultivate care in our surroundings. Her practice is installation-based and rooted in her textile education. At times, she is associated with the Master's program in Art and Public Space at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, where she is currently on leave while acquiring knowledge in care theory through field studies. Her primary driving force is her perspective on nature and the formation of relationships, exploring distance and alienation from elemental conditions such as architecture, landscape, and sensory experiences. She approaches the understanding of life and death in an abstract manner. This is expressed through experimental public interventions that undergo cyclical processes of blooming and degeneration. These interventions emerge from her ability to adapt her surroundings to create a present and captivating environment, consistently driven by a vision of beautification.

Risom Nyrup has a fragmented base with primary residencies in West Jutland, Copenhagen, and Oslo.

Lill Yildiz Yalcin (b.1981) grew up in Oslo, with a multicultural family. Her background as an activist and street artist, gives her art an undercurrent and a close relationship with the outdoor space. She exhibited regularly since 2006 and curated since 2017. Her sculptures, installations and jewelry, have a performative starting point, and debates private versus public space, institutional criticism and social ecology. With recycled materials and a penchant for rebar-steel, she links urban everyday life to current political agenda. She holds a bachelor's degree in Metal-and-Jewelry-art from KHIO, and a master's degree in Arts and Public Space at KHIO.

Merete Røstad is an interdisciplinary artist and educator with a practice rooted in research of collective memory, memory work and archives. Røstad uses participatory processes, installation and sculpture as a method in working with the public in the public sphere. Røstad has a doctorate in artistic research with the project The Participatory Monument – Remembrance and Forgetting as Art Practice in Public Sphere (2018) at the Oslo Academy of the Arts (KHiO) and a master’s in Art in Public Space and new artistic strategies from Bauhaus University. She works as an associate professor at the master’s Program in Art and Public Spaces and is the research leader at the Department of Arts and Crafts at KHiO. Røstad leads two international interdisciplinary research projects: MEMORYWORK and ARcTic South. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally in public spaces, at festivals, galleries, and museums. Røstad lives and works in Oslo and Berlin.

Anna Carin Hedberg (1966) & Ebba Moi (1971) are based in Oslo, Norway. They have collaborated on several art projects since 2003. In their work, they explore cultural changes in society, and examine structures that thematise these processes of change. They both trained at Trondheim Academy of Fine Art (1995-1999). Ebba Moi is also a collaborative artist at Tenthaus, an discursive art collective and artist run space that involves people in collaborative art projects. Anna Carin Hedberg was one of the initiators of Torpedo, the art bookshop, and the publishing house, Torpedo Press in Oslo. She works with art and liaison at the Norwegian National Museum in Oslo.

Download information about the sixteen projects.