The exhibition Trace me where I’m not at Home developed out from a research trip in August 2016 with Pikene på Broen aimed toward an exhibition at the Barents Spektakel 2017, where a travel through the Barents area; Kirkenes, Neiden, Grense Jakobselv, Nikel, Zapolyarny, Murmansk, and Teriberka, gave insight—and mostly questions—on how to portray such a multitude of cultures, people, and landscapes. In the final installation, the works where presented in a free-hanging row in the middle of the exhibition space as to mirror one significant—but at first perhaps insignificant—observation during the research trip; that was, the layers of curtains and objects present in the windows of apartment buildings in Nikel, Zapolyarny, Murmansk, and Teriberka, as is exemplified in one of the shorter texts that was presented as an audiofile in the exhibition:

 

In Nikel and Zapoljarnyj layers of curtains, from thinest to thickest, chiffon to raw canvas, serves a purpose by blocking the in-drift of dust and particles from the surrounding mines. But, it also becomes a separation between the public and the private, the outside and the inside, and, since it is the only thing people will see of your home from the outside, it also becomes where your public figure resides.

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The installation borrows its language from this idea, that each layer is both a hiding and a revealing, a chance to see and the impossibility of fully understanding an area as complex as the barents region.

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Some things, when you are a visitor, will forever stay hidden for you, but revelations can come just as unexpectedly, the view from the outside can be as revelatory as that from the inside, we just have to realize that we are observing the same scene from two different vantage points.

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The exhibition also included a series of Audio-files written by Marius Moldvær Presented in the gallery with tittle and accompanying QR-codes so that the audience could scan the QR- codes and listen to the audio le on their smartphone or device, you can listen to the audio-files that accompanied the exhibition on the left. 

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On the Leather Weavings:

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In Leather Weavings (Skin Traces) 2016 I utilize classical weaving techniques using raw leather to create unique pieces of tapestries that have been hung outside in different locations in the Barents Region; more specifically, Kirkenes (NO), Grense Jakobselv (NO), Neiden (NO), Nikel (RU), Murmansk (RU), and Teriberka (RU). The weavings made of raw leather and natural linnen will remain outside in these different locations for approximately six months, where the weather, climate, and its socio-geographical locations will effect the raw leather and linnen in different ways; it will darken, become greenish in the trees, salt covered by the arctic ocean etc. In this manner the Leather Weavings (Skin Traces) 2016 becomes a metaphor for the human skin and the effect the simple geographical locations, the climate and culture—industrial vs. rural—has on a human being on a purely physical level. 

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Pikene På Broen

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Barents Spektakel

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