Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim

Artists: Margrethe Pettersen, Alberta Whittle, Anna Tje, Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Ibrahim Fazlic, Jes Fan, Jessie Kleemann, Okwui Okpokwasili & Peter Born, Pedro Neves Marques

Exhibition title: Sex Ecologies

Curated by: Stefanie Hessler, Katja Aglert, Carl Martin Faurby, Katrine Elise Pedersen, Kaja Waagen, Prerna Bishnoi

Venue: Kunsthall Trondheim, Trondheim, Norway

Date: December 9, 2021 – March 6, 2022

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Kunsthall Trondheim

Note: Exhibition booklet is available here

The exhibition Sex Ecologies is the result of a two-year collaborative project between Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box, a collaborative international program hosted by Linköping University in Sweden that focuses on environmental humanities.

Sex Ecologies explores gender, sex, and sexuality in the context of ecology. The exhibition is founded in the belief that environmental and social justice go hand in hand. Through a transdisciplinary approach, the exhibition critiques understandings of nature, gender, sexuality, and race that attempt to objectify and naturalize them. For example, “laws against nature” used to criminalize queer sexuality, and in many places still do. These norms are justified through evolutionary narratives exclusively permitting heterosexual reproduction. Everything that does not fit this norm is considered unhealthy, polluted, or “degenerate.”
At the same time, nature since the European Enlightenment has been idealized as a place pertaining to a primitive past, or commodified as a site of extract ion of what the environmental thinker Jason W. Moore calls “cheap nature.” Similarly, the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg[1] writer and musician Leanne Betasamosake Simpson says of colonizers: “You use gender violence to remove Indigenous peoples and their descend ants from the land, you remove agency from the plant and animal worlds, and you reposition aki (the land) as ‘natural resources’ for the use and betterment of white people.” These norms have proven detrimental to humans and to the thing we call nature alike.

The exhibition presents newly commissioned works by nine artists made specifically for the exhibition. The artists participated in regular online meetings to workshop their artworks with the exhibition curators and with each other. The process was accompanied by an advisory board for cross pollination composed of researchers of The Seed Box network and from the local context of Trondheim, from disciplines like gender studies, environmental humanities, communications, and Indigenous studies. This methodology is unusual for group exhibitions, where artists mostly work alone and do not meet until the opening.

The works resulting from this process address sur rogacy[2] and male pregnancy, the connections between the hair of a Black girl as she is coming of age and the roots of trees, ecological BDSM[3] with toxicity and microplastics, productive contamination in oysters, mythologies centered on the Greenlandic mother
of the sea, the connectivity between a human body and the Nidelva river while láibmat (drifting in North Sámi language), an immersive multispecies dance floor, the trade routes from Cameroon to the banlieues of France of the safou fruit, or the shipworms eating away at Christopher Columbus’s ships as decolonial agents.

The artworks show that Sex Ecologies is not one thing, but many. Here, nature is considered as beyond the natural and the biological rubs up against the synthetic. Bodies are composed of matter as much as of spirit and desire. Mythology meets hxstory[4], human hair morphs into tree roots, and plastics have reproductive agency.

Transdisciplinary work bridging art, environmental humanities, and various other fields can help us create better worlds for humans and nonhumans. Sex Ecologies highlights the emancipatory role of pleasure and affect beyond the human in our current ecological era, where nature is far from natural. It includes the biological, the technological, the social, and the political. In Sex Ecologies, desire, eros, and care dance with flesh, worms, and spirits.

The public program for the exhibition is curated by the center for art, knowledge, and society RAW Material Company from Dakar, Senegal. Conceived as four day long festival symposium, the program builds on RAW Material Company’s previous project Who Said It Was Simple (2014 and ongoing) discussing sexual difference and queer rights in Senegal and Africa today.

A book co-published with The MIT Press presents newly commissioned texts from the fields of art, gender studies, environmental humanities, science and technology studies, technology studies, and Indigenous studies, alongside visionary existing texts. The publication further contextualizes the research and plants
a seed for future work in the field. The book is available at Kunsthall Trondheim and in our online shop.

[1] A First Nation whose homelands are in the area also known as southern Ontario, Canada.
[2] Surrogacy is the process of a woman carrying a baby for someone else who, after the child is born, obtains custody and guardianship.
[3] BDSM refers to the consensual erotic acts of bondage, dominance, sadism, and masochism.
[4] This alternative spelling of history signifies a more inclusive perspective that acknowledges the contributions of women, trans people, and nonbinary people, and that embraces not only the dominant narratives of victories but a plurality of voices.

Installation view of the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. The image shows work by artists Jes Fan and Margrethe Pettersen. Commissioned by Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen

Jes Fan: Mother of Pearl 方 (2021). Color print on satin. 76,2 x 127 cm. Part of the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. Commissioned by Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Courtesy the artist and Empty Gallery. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen

Margrethe Pettersen: Láibmat (2021). Sound installation and silk room. 280 cm height x 380 cm diameter, sound, 20’ (loop). Part of the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. Commissioned by Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen

Installation view of the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. The image shows work by artists Margrethe Pettersen, Jessie Kleemann, Anna Tje and Alberta Whittle. Commissioned by Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen

Anna Tje: I’m So Glad You Chose Me (2021). Multimedia installation with ceramics, vinyl player, 45rpm vinyl record, sound: side A 4’9”, side B 4, video, seating device. Dimensions variable. Part of the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. Courtesy the artist. Commissioned by Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen

Anna Tje: I’m So Glad You Chose Me (2021), detail. Multimedia installation with ceramics, vinyl player,45rpm vinyl record, sound: side A 4’9”, side B 4, video, seating device. Dimensions variable. Part of the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. Courtesy the artist Commissioned by Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen

Installation view of Alberta Whittle’s works in the exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. Commissioned by Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Courtesy the artist and Copperfield, London. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen

Alberta Whittle: Uncoiling my navel strings to fertilise interspecies love (2021), detail. Cowrie shells, glass beads, coral, textiles, clay, wire, plastic pony beads, spider conch. Dimensions variable. Part of the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. Commissioned by Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Courtesy the artist and Copperfield, London. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen

Installation view of Jessie Kleemann’s work Sassuma Arnaa (2021). Drawings, video and performance. Part of the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. Commissioned by Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen

Jessie Kleemann: Tulukkat Qaqortippata When the Ravens Turn White (2021). Ink and pencil on paper. 245 x 150 cm. Part of the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. Commissioned by Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen.

Pedro Neves Marques with Haut: The Ovary (2021). 16 mm film transferred to video, 5’ sound. Part of the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. Courtesy the artists and Galleria Umberto di Marino. Commissioned by the Liverpool Biennial with the support of Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen

Installation view of Pedro Neves Marques’ The Ovary (2021), with Haut, and Vampiric Poetry #1 (2021) in the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. Courtesy the artists and Galleria Umberto di Marino. Vampiric Poetry (2021) is commissioned by Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen

Anne Duk Hee Jordan: The Worm – Terrestrial, Fantastic and Wet (2021). Multimedia installation with sculptures, black light, video 12’51” (in collaboration with Pauline Doutreluingne). Dimensions variable, site-specific. Part of the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. Commissioned by Urania Berlin e.V, Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen

Anne Duk Hee Jordan: The Worm – Terrestrial, Fantastic and Wet (2021), detail. Multimedia installation with sculptures, black light, video 12’51” (in collaboration with Pauline Doutreluingne). Dimensions variable, site-specific. Part of the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. Commissioned by Urania Berlin e.V, Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen

Okwui Okpokwasili with Peter Born: Repose without rest without end (2021), detail. Multimedia installation with video and sound. Dimensions variable. Part of the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. Courtesy the artists. Commissioned by Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen

Installation view of the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. The image shows works by artists Ibrahim Fazlic and Okwui Okpokwasili with Peter Born. Commissioned by Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen

Ibrahim Fazlic: The Tingly Room (2021). Sound and multimedia installation, 35’ multilogue (loop). Part of the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. Courtesy the artist. Commissioned by Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen

Ibrahim Fazlic: The Tingly Room (2021), detail. Sound and multimedia installation, 35’ multilogue (loop). Part of the group exhibition Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway. Courtesy the artist. Commissioned by Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box. Photo: Daniel Vincent Hansen.