Joar Nango: The Festival Exhibition 2020

The Festival Exhibition 2020 at Bergen Kunsthall presents Norwegian-Sámi artist Joar Nango. Initially trained as an architect, Nango constructs his exhibitions as laboratories, investigating traditions and experiences from his cultural background in Northern Norway, characterized by flexibility, pragmatism and adaptation to nature. 

The exhibition will be less a finished product than an arena for a social process of creating places and situations with possibilities for improvisation and collective action. Nango’s work addresses indigenous identity and decolonialization, looking at these topics not in isolation, but as an expression of the ongoing dynamics between the so-called cultural centre and its peripheries. 

The exhibition is based on a theoretical framework that Nango has set up together with collaborators from different artistic or academic backgrounds, including art historian Mathias Danbolt, writer Candice Hopkins and anthropologist Dimitris Dalakoglou. Following Nango’s ongoing investigations of the history of Sámi architecture, his library of books on the topic will be utilized in the exhibition, as well as a series of re-appropriated historical images from the 1700s. This series of hand-coloured drawings was made in the mid-1700s and is among the first known representations of Sámi architecture. In Nango’s exhibition, the images act as an historical counterpoint, and a comment on the appropriation, circulation and representative power of images from indigenous cultures. 

For a large-scale projection screen, Nango makes use of dried halibut stomachs that are sewn together. The technique, called skievvar in the coastal Sami tradition, is a way of making transparent windows in outhouses and simple buildings. Several of Joar Nango’s previous projects are brought to Bergen, and re configured for the exhibition, such as the girjegumpi, a small building made as a nomadic library inspired by the Sami gumpi, a herder’s hut mounted on sleigh runners. Nango’s van, a Mercedes Sprinter which was used in the project European Everything at Documenta 14 in 2017, will also be a central element in the Festival Exhibition. The physical infrastructure, and the travel itinerary between Bergen and Tromsø, form a geographical line between two site- specific landing points in the project. For European Everything he drove the same van from Tromsø to Athens – through the length of Europe – in an excursion in which themes of migration, relocation and the nomadic became a concrete experience. In May this year, the Sprinter doubled as a mobile TV studio during the production of Post-Capitalist Architecture TV. 

A book will be published on the occasion of the exhibition, featuring new texts by Dimitris Dalakoglou, Mathias Danbolt, Candice Hopkins, Sigbjørn Skåden and Axel Wieder. Published by Sternberg Press and Bergen Kunsthall. 

Events

Online Opening Ceremony
Friday, September 4, 12pm
Aili Keskitalo, President of the Sami Parliament
Axel Wieder, Director Bergen Kunsthall
Joar Nango, Festival Artist 2020

Avant Joik
Friday, September 4, 8 & 9pm, Free
Concert. Maja Ratkje, Katarina Barruk and Matti Aikio.

Opening weekend day programme
Saturday, September 5, 12pm, Free
Workshops, talks and happenings.

Carte Blanche meets Joar Nango
Saturday, September 19, Various times

Kunsten å lage gull av gråstein
Friday, October 16, 7pm
Screening of a new documentary film about FFB’s public art project Odelsgut og
Fantefølge in Kvam. In collaboration with Cinemateket and Bergen International Film Festival.

Raven Chacon
Saturday, October 24, 9pm, Free
Concert

Plattform: Joar Nango, Candice Hopkins
Saturday, October 24, 2pm, Free
Conversation

Plattform: Dimitris Dalakoglou
Wednesday, October 28, 8pm, Free
Talk

Plattform: Mathias Danbolt, Tone Huse, Joar Nango
Saturday, October 31, 2pm, Free
Conversation
 

FFB
Fellesskapsprosjektet å Fortette Byen
September 4-November 8, 2020

In parallel with the Festival Exhibition, Bergen Kunsthall presents a mini-retrospective exhibition by the architecture collective Fellesskapsprosjektet å Fortette Byen (FFB, “The Collective Project for a Denser Concentration of the City”) encompassing objects and archive material collected and produced by the group over the past decade. 

The collective is an ongoing collaborative practice established in 2010 by Joar Nango, Håvard Arnhoff and Eystein Talleraas, with Matti Aikio joining in 2012. 

An LP titled An Architecture Celebrating the Failure of Capitalism will be released on the occasion of the exhibition. Published by Bergen Kunsthall and FFB, with contributions by Ánndaris Rimpi, Hanan Benhamar, Frode Kvinge Flatland, Alexander Rishaug and others. 

Joar Nango & Ken Are Bongo
Post-Capitalist Architecture TV
As a first chapter of the Festival Exhibition, Joar Nango made a three-part TV series together with Sámi filmmaker Ken Are Bongo, exploring Sámi architecture. The series was filmed with a mobile TV studio during travels through the northern landscape, meeting guests for interviews and visiting key architectural sites. 

With: Candice Hopkins, Elin Haugdal, Elin Már Øyen Vister, Dimitris Dalakoglou, Thora Petursdottir, Ande Somby, Lan Paulsen, Elle Márjá Eira, Mathias Danbolt, Chris Cornelius, Matti Aikio, Anders Rimpi, Alexander Rishaug, Taqralik Partridge, Liisa-Rávná Finnbog, Allessandro Petti, Per-Issát Juuso

Post-Capitalist Architecture TV Part 1 - On materiality and resource economy
Post-Capitalist Architecture TV Part 2 - On nomadism and flow
Post-Capitalist Architecture TV Part 3 - On decolonization and architecture

The Festival Exhibition 
Bergen Kunsthall´s flagship exhibition, established in 1953. Each year we present a large-scale exhibition with new work by a Norwegian artist, in connection with the Bergen International Festival (Festspillene i Bergen). The exhibition is considered the most important solo presentation for a Norwegian artist in their home country and creates a national debate about the state of the art, similarly to the Turner Prize in the UK.

Supported by the Department of Culture, Bergen City Council, Vestland County Council, Fritt Ord, Sparebanken Vest, Kulturrådet, Sametinget, Bergesenstiftelsen, H. Westfal-Larsen og Hustru Anna Westfal-Larsen’s Almen-nyttige Fond, Norske Kunstforeninger.

Press Requests
Alexandra Saheb
ARTPRESS – Ute Weingarten
T +49 (0) 30 4849 6350
saheb.artpress [​at​] uteweingarten.de
www.artpress-uteweingarten.de/en/press

Stein-Inge Århus
Bergen Kunsthall
T +47 45 24 00 92
stein-inge [​at​] kunsthall.no
www.kunsthall.no