Woman Painting National Identity

Woman Painting National Identity, 2026 –

Identity is shaped not only by individual experience, but by cultural structures that precede us. In nation-states, ideas of belonging, normality, threat, and moral value are absorbed through institutions and national narratives, often before they are consciously examined. They create both cohesion and distinctions between “us” and “them.” Identity is therefore not simply an individual project, but also a form of cultural governance that shapes how we understand ourselves, others, and our place in society.

For more than ten years, my artistic practice has explored the relationship between people, landscapes, infrastructures, natural resources and the collective narratives through which we understand the world around us. My work moves between painting, performance, video and site-specific practices, but is consistently concerned with how political and social structures become embodied in places, materials and everyday life.

Since 2014, my ongoing performance series Woman Cleaning has used the simple act of cleaning as a way of approaching questions of labour, care, responsibility and power. Over time, the work has developed into an investigation of the structures that lie beneath seemingly ordinary actions. What does it mean to maintain, repair or clean something that is larger than oneself? And what kinds of histories and ideologies are we continually reproducing through these acts?

I now understand Woman Cleaning National Identity as a broader framework for my practice. The title does not refer to national identity as a fixed or singular idea, but to the ways in which identity is continuously produced through landscapes, infrastructures, resources, histories and collective images. In Scandinavia and Northern Europe, identity is often understood primarily as something individual. Yet our sense of who we are is also profoundly shaped by the places we inhabit and the narratives embedded within them.

My recent work has increasingly turned towards the landscape as a site where these narratives become visible. Fredsfrisen examined national histories through monumental painting and public space. Rv. 555 Sotrasambandet followed the transformation of a landscape through one of Norway's largest infrastructure projects. My current project, Woman Painting, turns towards Mongstad and the Fensfjord, where Norway's oil history, industrial present and possible energy futures exist within the same landscape.

Here, I return to painting as a primary method of inquiry. I am interested in what painting can become when it attempts to experience the world from within rather than observe it from a distance. The landscape is therefore not simply a motif to be represented. It becomes a place where a nation thinks about itself. This also changes how I approach landscape painting. Historically, the genre has been deeply connected to ownership, mapping, national imagination and the positioning of the observer outside the landscape. I want to explore another relationship between artist, image and place: one in which the experience of being within a landscape becomes part of how the painting is made.

The paintings move between figuration and abstraction, allowing motifs to emerge and dissolve. Transparent surfaces cast shadows onto the surrounding space, refusing the idea of the painting as a closed image. I work with plastic and other fossil-based materials not simply as supports, but as part of the meaning of the work. Painting a landscape shaped by the oil age on a material produced by that same age creates a literal and material connection between image, history and place.

Across these projects, I am interested in art not as an illustration of political questions, but as a way of producing knowledge through attention, materiality and embodied experience. The question is not only what a landscape represents, but what it reveals about the society that has produced it.
Woman Cleaning /Painting National Identity is therefore an ongoing investigation into how national identity is made visible, material and lived through the landscapes we inhabit.

26.juli.2026

2.august.2026

#01 | Field Notes from the Nordhordland UNESCO Biosphere Reserve by Woman Painting

Here I investigate quarries and the export of fill materials on their way to Europe. Wikipedia says that the area is characterized by a “synergy circle between mass extraction, maritime logistics and circular economy”. That’s not even artspeak. It’s industry language. For the next two years I will be working in the Nordhordland UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and sharing small glimpses from the fieldwork along the way. I am curious about how a landscape in energy transition can be painted, and what it does to our notions of nature, industry and national identity.

When does an industrial area become a landscape?

Field Notes from the Nordhordland UNESCO Biosphere Area by Woman Painting
#02 | The Fensfjord Basin

Why work here, specifically?

The Nordhordland UNESCO Biosphere Area is a model site within UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme. Here, new energy systems are being developed alongside the management of natural and cultural heritage. Along the Fensfjord, oil, carbon capture, shipping, fisheries, aquaculture, and new industry converge. The area is designated as one of 16 hubs within the "Green Region Vestland" initiative. It is this concentration of nature and technology that makes the area so compelling to me. I want to explore how the energy transition is not only altering the landscape but also reshaping our perceptions of what constitutes a Norwegian landscape.

When does an industrial site become a landscape?

13.august.2026