Artists: Marie Nerland (With: Mette Edvardsen, Jiska Huizing, Andrea Sørlie Barrett, Mariama Fatou Kalley Slåttøy, Icaro Zorbar)
Exhibition title: Theia
Curated by: Mathijs van Geest
Venue: Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen, Norway
Date: May 25 – August 11, 2024
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Hordaland Kunstsenter
Note: Exhibition floor plan is available here
The project Theia by the Trondheim based artist Marie Nerland consists of an exhibition, several performances and an upcoming publication. Theia is inspired by a widely acclaimed hypothesis about how the moon came into existence. It suggests that billions of years ago a large planet from the early solar system, sometimes described as a sibling planet to Earth, collided with the Earth with immense impact. While parts of Theia integrated with Earth’s body, a large piece of the planet got caught in Earth’s orbit, becoming the Moon as we know it today.
To speak of the event that birthed our moon rather than destroyed an entire planet, suggests a hopeful narrative about the journey of objects and how they are altered in multiple and complex ways, through changing circumstances and sometimes clashes. Building upon this story of collision, the exhibition and its associated events are based around the motif of encounter, threading through both objects and artistic practices.
The installation shown in the HKS gallery space consists mainly of found objects and architectural structures used to support previous exhibitions, gathered from various art institutions in and around Bergen, such as plinths, benches and left-over wall structures. When they come together, these individual pieces each with their scars and damages – otherwise discarded or stored away – form a tableau of memories and past events.
Nerland has invited several artists to take part in the project. The performance she has developed for Theia is co-created with and performed by the dancer Andrea Sørlie Barrett. The artists Icaro Zorbar and Mette Edvardsen have both been invited to present a newly produced performance piece, which will be presented in the gallery space during the last weekend of the exhibition.
The Oslo based artist Jiska Huizing has also been invited by Nerland to create a new work, an audio piece that adds sound to the installation and exhibition space. This work, combined with a recording of the performer Mariama Slåttøy reading a text written by Nerland, resonates through the gallery space in a loop.
A video work and a series of photographs showing an eclectic selection of objects yet all belonging to the same life, are dispersed throughout the exhibition space, integrated in the installation. Like going through someone’s moving boxes studying their belongings, these images – moving and still – provide a sense of how the past and the present are tangled up in one another. Seen as a whole Theia seems to ponder the question: What is a memory?
