VIDEO-STILLS FROM THE ONGOING SERIES WOMAN CLEANING:
Woman Cleaning Equinor , Fornebu 2021 # 18
a Global Army of Cleaners. Part of the Global Coastline Rebellion Network.
Duration: 1.35
Do you give a shit?
Woman Cleaning Salmon Farming, Hardanger Fjord 2021 # 17
This work is online and free to be used for fighting open salmon cages with credits to the artist.
Duration:1:59
Woman Cleaning for a New Beginning, Belmarsh Prison 2019 # 16
Part of the campaign Free Julian Assange. This work is online and free to be used for the campaign with credits.
Duration: 3:43
Woman Cleaning Westminster Magistrates Court, London 2019 # 15
Duration: 5:58
Woman Cleaning Imperialism, Horn of Africa 2019 # 14
Duration: 1.01
Woman Cleaning Growth, a walk of penance from Oslo to Stavanger 2017 # 13
Duration of video: 5 min. Duration of walk: 117 timer
Woman Cleaning F-35, Bergen Kunsthall 2016 # 12
Duration of Performance: 2 hours
Woman Cleaning Law & Order, Korskirken i Bergen 2016 # 11
Woman Cleaning Weapon Industry, London 2016 # 10
Woman Cleaning Final Destination, Indonesia 2015 # 9
Woman Cleaning Collective Memory, Masada dessert 2014 # 8
Woman Cleaning Dumping of Mining Landfills. Førdefjorden 2015 # 7
Woman Cleaning , Varkala India 2015 # 6
Woman Cleaning European History, Poland 2015 # 5
Woman Cleaning National Identity, Danmark 2014 # 4
Woman Cleaning National Identity, Norway 2014 # 3
Woman Cleaning Shame, Norway 2014 # 2 Washing the ground between the Grand Hotel and the Norwegian parliament building with the Norwegian flag while HH Dali Lama , the former peace prize winner was walking the distance. The performance was done as a act of shame when the government's decision not to officially welcome the Dali Lama due to economic threats from China.
Woman Cleaning Palestine and Israel 2014 # 1
Woman Cleaning (2014– )
In Woman Cleaning, we encounter a young Norwegian woman who turns toward the hard realities of geopolitics through a simple, repetitive act: cleaning. Over time, the woman ages, her experiences deepen, her understanding of the world sharpens, yet the action remains the same. The question is not whether this gesture is parody or sincerity, but what happens when care, ritual, and bodily action are placed at the center of political conflicts usually addressed from a distance. The series takes its point of departure from current events, sites, and symbols drawn from the news. The artist seeks out what is difficult, stands close, looks even closer, and places her hand upon what she cleans. The action is simple, yet ambiguous: Can an act carry responsibility? Can guilt be washed away? And what happens to personal and collective memory when we attempt to do so?
Woman Cleaning examines the relationship between the individual and the collective in a secular society where religious concepts of repentance and forgiveness no longer provide clear answers. Instead, the focus shifts to the ethics of action: who bears responsibility, and how is it distributed between the individual and society? Cleaning becomes not an act of purification, but an inquiry into whether there is space for forgiveness within the public, political sphere. The project also emerges from a lived experience of care, role expectations, and bodily responsibility. By bringing the language of care into geopolitical contexts, the work challenges the separation between the private, the everyday, and the political. The feminine is understood here not as identity, but as method: a way of working with attention, presence, and responsibility in relation to power.The series consists of performative actions documented as film and photography, including the cleaning of military equipment, landscapes, newspapers, and public spaces in both Israel and Norway. The works may appear naïve, caring, or resigned, depending on the viewer’s position. This openness is central to the project.
Woman Cleaning does not offer solutions, but seeks to activate a space for reflection on how societies relate to conflict, guilt, and peace. At a time when political discourse is often dominated by military, technocratic, and masculine perspectives, Woman Cleaning insists on another gaze. Peace-building is not approached as weakness, but as a demanding practice requiring courage, precision, and the capacity to hold complexity over time. The series thus forms a feminist and humanist investigation into the self-image of the nation-state, and into what it means for the individual to live within the tension between ideals, actions, and responsibility.
In this sense, Woman Cleaning can be read as an investigation of the nation-state and its rituals of self-representation. The actions engage with symbols of power, conflict, and diplomacy, and question how nations construct narratives of responsibility, innocence, and moral authority. By placing a vulnerable, caring body within these symbolic and political landscapes, the work examines the tension between the ideals a nation projects and the realities it helps sustain. Woman Cleaning thus approaches diplomacy not as abstract negotiation, but as a lived and embodied practice, revealing how national self-images are maintained, challenged, and occasionally fractured through individual action.
Woman Cleaning, 2014-
A journey that began in 2014, one that I have pursued for a decade. As a practitioner of the ancient technologies of the ritual act of cleaning,
I embarked on a series of performances under the banner of "Woman Cleaning" which traces back to a trip to Jerusalem and waking up in a Jehovah's Witnesses apartment in the old city (don't ask me why?). I woke up with an idea of engaging in geopolitical cleaning, a symbolic new start amidst the weight of centuries of war, shame, and endless violence.
The inaugural performance took place in the vast desert, where I encountered an Israeli tank with a simple white cleaning rag.
Since then, I have cleaned diverse locations and situations, examining our alienation and our ability to coexist with the knowledge of tragedy.
The survival mechanisms we construct are the defence systems that shield us from the harsh realities of life. Are we unwittingly corrupted by the very act of growing up, navigating through violence and lived experiences?
18 performances is documented with video-stills here
