Gitte Sætre is a multidisciplinary artist working with dialogue-based art, performance, photography, video, and sound. Sætre's oeuvre deals with current and relevant issues, such as climate change, neoliberal ideological patterns, and cultural radicalism. Her body of work is characterized by the weight of contemporary society yet opens room for humor and quiet reflection. Her work investigates roles and positions through generations, related to philosophical questions like forgiveness, guilt, and freedom within the immediate family sphere and into the sphere of national and international politics.
Currently, she is working on a production called Commission of the Good Solutions with seven women at the National Theater in Bergen. For more info about this, have a look here.During covid lockdown, she produced, together with her partner Frans Jacobi, the hybrid web-tv series Are You Ready in seven episodes. Are You Ready? was a part of the Nature as Infrastructure, a virtual program curated by the Copenhagen-based artist collective The Winter Office (TWO). Organized within the frame of Manifesta 13.
Her ever-ongoing project Woman Cleaning has been shown internationally in several locations over the years. A series of video-performative penance where she washes places and/or objects. Before she started on this extensive cleaning project, her work was related very much to women and the private sphere through a project called Mothersdust(morstøv). In this project, she collected dust from her house and used it as her artistic methodology. Photographing a small mass of dust as a series of work. House dust comprises hairs, fibers of cloths, crumbs, mold, mites, and bacteria. Waste is derived from the very essence of daily life and its symbols of our existence, as if it were the intimate microcosm that exposes one's activities. She has constructed a figure that diligently washes and tries to create harmony and gain control or understanding of the world. The project is strongly linked to her as a person, a Norwegian female born in 1975. A generation that thought everything was possible. The project is within the sphere of national and international politics. It touches upon rituals with religious connotations, feminism, humor, and hopes and dreams.
Her work has been shown at Manifesta 13,Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, the WhiteBox in New York, Rogaland Kunstsenter, Small Project in Tromsø, Bomuldsfabrikken in Arendal, Oslo Kunstforening, House of Foundation in Moss, the collateral programme of Kochi Biennale in India, Media Impact in Moscow, Artic Artforum in Arkhangelsk, Komunitas Salihara in Jakarta; Kongernes Lapidarium in Copenhagen, XX1 Gallery in Warsaw; Pristine Galerie in Mexico, Kunsthall 3.14, Bergen Kunsthall and KODE in Bergen, Fylkingen in Stockholm and Guramayne Art Center in Addis Ababa. More info in CV.