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We wish everyone a warm welcome to celebrate the opening of the exhibition For History, Change Position, curated by Hilde Methi.
The program will include a sound performance by Espen Sommer Eide and a conversation with Hilde Methi.
Saturday 30th May, 14:00 - 17:00
Snacks and refreshments provided
For History, Change Position is a commemorative exhibition celebrating the artistic activity and cultural exchanges that were enabled through the porous Norwegian-Russian border that existed in the period between 1990 until 2022.
The exhibition coincides with the launching of the "Border Art Archive", an internet-based project collecting artworks and curatorial projects from this period, spanning from the end of the Cold War to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The archive focuses on the border regions of East Finnmark, Murmansk oblast, and adjacent areas on the Finnish side. The archive will also recount local art histories branching out to many different places, to which artists from a wide variety of countries have contributed. The Border Art Archive will convey a legacy of a milieu and era that is now past. What have we really left behind? And which stories will we pass on?
The exhibition title For History, Change Position is borrowed from a work by Kristin Tårnesvik from 2004; 'For history' refers to a specific mistranslation of 'na pamjat' (на память), from Russian, which means 'in memory of'.
At Tromsø Kunstforening, the archive is in the process of overflowing into the space, featuring smells, spells, sounds, texts, music, a wax tablecloth, textiles, posters, lithographs, photographs, rocks, teeth, birch timber and a sundial.
Also on display are art works by Helena Wikström, Frans Pomassl, Berit Overgaard, Geir Tore Holm, Morten Torgersrud, Vladimir Mogilevtsev, Kristin Tårnesvik, Yvette Brackmann, Anne Lise Stenseth, Vera Chebotar, Oleg Vassiliev, Espen Sommer Eide, Ivan Galuzin, Oleg Samoilov, Vemund Thoe, Jury Grishenko, Laura Anderson Barbata, Glafira Severianova and Signe Lidén.
The Border Art Archive and the exhibition For History, Change Position is produced by the Kirkenes-based curator Hilde Methi, in collaboration with amongst others Dušan Barok, artist and co-founder of Monoskop.org, and Ekaterina Mikhailova at the University of Tromsø.
The works of Russian artists currently living in Russia and presented in the exhibition and in the archive have been included without these artists having been contacted for their permission.