In The Disobedient Researcher: On Method and Knowing, Monica Takvam invites us to reflect on how we learn, share, and experience knowledge. After many years of teaching in higher education, she turns her attention to the structures of learning – questioning the rules, assumptions, and hierarchies that define academic research and education.
The exhibition continues her long-standing engagement with themes of language, perception and the body as a site of knowing. Exploring the space between theory and practice, between what can be measured, and what resists categorisation, she questions the conventions of conducting research: the manuals, the methodologies, the systems designed to produce ‘objective’ results. She uses rules as both framework and resistance, working within them, bending them, and allowing them to break. This method of ‘disobedient research’ opens space for subjectivity, softness and contradiction.
In her new series of photographs (and artist’s book) presented at Entrée, the expected objects and step-by-step instructions from various handbooks have been omitted. Instead, we are left with gestures and compositions that resist immediate interpretation. With each image stripped of its original context, our brain instinctively searches for patterns and logic. Guiding the visitors, instructions are played through a public announcement speaker. Mind the gap.
Monica Takvam (b. 1984, Dale) has an interdisciplinary practice across Norway and the UK. Her work spans photography, video, sound, text and installation, and explores positionality, perception, blindness, nostalgia, and language. Takvam has taught at leading institutions, including the London College of Communication – University of the Arts London, City of Westminster College, Canterbury Christ Church University, and University of Hertfordshire. She holds degrees from the University for the Creative Arts and London College of Communication – University of the Arts London. She has contributed widely to academic research and publishing, including editing Photography & Culture and directing Renaissance Photography Prize. Takvam’s work has been recognised with awards, artist residencies and grants, including Celeste Visible White Photo Prize. In addition to her artistic practice, she currently works as a curator for KORO – Public Art Norway and is the managing director of Kunstgarasjen in Bergen.
