WOMAN CLEANING

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.