Lene Berg: Fra Far / Damla Kilickiran: Twine an image that is yet to be

Bergen Kunsthall is proud to present Lene Berg as the Festival Artist 2022. The Festival Exhibition is considered the most important solo presentation for a Norwegian artist in the country and has been shown each summer since 1953, in parallel to the Bergen International Festival (Festspillene i Bergen). Lene Berg works as an artist and filmmaker and over the past two decades has produced outstanding works that question the way in which images create facts. In the Festival Exhibition, she presents an extensive new project titled Fra Far (From Father), which continues her investigation of current socio-political climates through autobiographical material.

Berg was nine years old when her father was arrested in Paris in 1975 and imprisoned accused of killing his wife (the artist’s step-mother) Evelyne Zammit. This dramatic childhood experience is the starting point of the project which unfolds in a series of film and audio works, together with scenographic elements. Berg reconstructs her memory of the events and the gaps that exist in her recollection through staged film scenes, installations and found-footage. Confronting harsh autobiographical experiences, the exhibition investigates fundamental questions of guilt, memory, and the collective production of truth.

Berg’s father—the film director and author Arnljot Berg—took his own life several years after his release from jail and return to Norway. An influential figure in the Norwegian cultural scene during his lifetime, he left behind a now almost forgotten legacy of feature-films and short films, novels and stage plays, as well as unpublished texts, scripts and journals. In examining her father’s life and work, Berg creates an encounter between a living and a dead artist, a father and a daughter, a woman and a man, and contemporary Norway and the country in which Arnljot Berg lived and worked.

Lene Berg, born 1965, lives and works as a film director and visual artist in Berlin and Oslo. Berg’s latest production, the autobiographical film False Belief, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2019 and was nominated for the Amnesty and Teddy Awards. She represented Norway in the 55th Venice Biennale with the film Dirty Young Loose (2013).

The exhibition is accompanied by an artist’s book that includes material and notes. A novel by the same title will be published in autumn 2022 by the publisher Kolon.

Curated by Axel Wieder.

Also opening

Damla Kilickiran: Twine an image that is yet to be
For her exhibition in gallery V, Swedish-born artist Damla Kilickiran produces a new installation that continues her research into the limits of rationalisation and magical technologies. The new work is based on a measuring instrument, the “lesbian rule”, which can trace non-straight forms, for example the complex curves of classical columns. Already in antique philosophy, the instrument was used also figuratively to describe non-normative judgements. In her research, Kilickiran often draws on occult or spiritual traditions and their transgression of Western notions of knowledge.

The central element of the exhibition is a set of rulers made from lead, the traditional material of flexible rules, that are winding through the exhibition space. Held by hooks, the 130 metre long metal elements cross the gallery like a drawing in space, measure it—with a scale known from traditional rulers—while remaining flexible, mimetic and in motion. As part of the installation, as an infrastructure between the threads of lead, found masses of concrete and steel reinforcement give hold to the rulers. The installation is set in a yellowish light, creating a disturbing atmosphere—a futuristic scene, an end, a moment after a disaster or a collapse of a world that seemed stable and universal. On several occasions throughout the exhibition period, the installation is activated by a live reading, during which performers will speak a text written by the artist while manipulating the installation.

Lead as a material has a key role in the exhibition, in its historical meaning and use, but also its specific material qualities. It remains soft and malleable, and it is toxic. The material used in the exhibition was produced in the old Swedish mining city Sala, and mining and its reading in a cosmological sense form an undercurrent for the project.

Damla Kilickiran (b. 1991, Sweden) is based in Oslo and has recently exhibited at the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA); UKS, Oslo (both 2021); Destiny’s Atelier, Oslo (2020); Lofoten International Art Festival (2019); and Nordnorsk Kunstner-senter, Svolvær (2018). Damla Kilickiran is based in Oslo.

Related events

Opening: Thursday, May 26, 1pm
The exhibitions will be opened by director Axel Wieder on the steps of Bergen Kunsthall in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Sonja

Plattform: Lene Berg in conversation with Axel Wieder
Saturday, May 28, 2pm
Talk

Damla Kilickiran: Twine an image that is yet to be
Performed by Finn Adrian Jorkjen
Sunday, May 29, 3pm 

Plattform: Merete Røstad and Eliot Moleba, “Memory and story-telling”
Saturday, June 4, 2pm
Talk

Lene Berg, Kopfkino, 2012 
Tuesday, June 7, 6pm
Venue: Cinemateket in Bergen
Film screening

Damla Kilickiran, Twine an image that is yet to be
Performed by Georgiana Dobre
Sunday, June 19, 3pm

Making Film: Short films selected by Lene Berg 
Tuesday, June 21, 6pm
Venue: Cinemateket in Bergen
Film screening

Readings: Damla Kilickiran, Eleni Lleremia, Lesia Vasylchenko, Anne Ødegård, and more 
Thursday, August 4, 6pm 

Plattform: Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic
Saturday, August 20, 2pm
Talk

Plattform: Production and reception of art films in Norway
Sunday, August 21, 2pm
Talk

Supported by the Department of Culture, Bergen City Council, Vestland County Council, Arts Council Norway, Fritt Ord, Sparebanken Vest, H. Westfal-Larsen og Hustru Anna Westfal-Larsen’s Almennyttige Fond, Familien Brynildsens Legat, Grieg Foundation, Fond for lyd og bilde - Arts Council Norway, Norwegian Visual Artists Fund, Bergesenstiftelsen, Norske kunstforeninger, Kunstsentrene i Norge, Viken Filmsenter

Press requests
Alexandra Saheb, ARTPRESS—Ute Weingarten: T +49 (0) 30 4849 6350 / saheb.artpress [​at​] uteweingarten.de

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