Panteha Abareshi: INVALID PLEASURES / Sissel Blystad: Topografi

Kunsthall Trondheim presents two new exhibitions, opening March 30: In INVALID PLEASURES Panteha Abareshi explores how the disabled body and mind are regarded, including as fetish objects. In Topografi (Topography)  Sissel Blystad presents a visually strong textile universe composed of woolen yarn glued in elaborate patterns onto support surfaces. 

INVALID PLEASURES is Panteha Abareshi’s first large solo exhibition outside the US. Alongside discussing how the “able-bodied” gaze regards the disabled body, INVALID PLEASURES explores sexuality and sensuality in the context of disability, showing new works created specifically for this occasion, including performance-based video works and sculptural pieces.

The exhibition simultaneously explores our prejudice and celebrates variety and differences, thus suggesting that genuine equality can only emerge from what is described as “disability pride”. In their works, Abareshi explores sexuality and sensuality in the context of fetishism and the interplay between pleasure and pain, which the artist considers to be highly significant to a disabled person’s experience. In this regard, it is important to acknowledge that all bodies are continually changing and that all bodies have the right to have romantic and sexual autonomy in their desires, regardless of “ability”. A constant thread in Abareshi’s artistic practice is the exploration of how the binary categories of “healthy” and “sick” are used to enforce the idea of how some bodies are considered to be of more value than others, and how our built environment often reinforces this bias by being accessible for some, but inaccessible for bodies with disabilities or impairments by design. Central to the artist is their personal experience of living with a body that has a chronic illness/disability that causes pain and bodily degeneration, which increases with age.

In their newly commissioned works, Abareshi investigates the disabled body as an object of fetishism and its representation in pornography and fetish materials. The works question the able-bodied gaze as well as ideas of consent within power dynamics in general, beyond the objectification found between the onlooker and the disabled body.

Curator: Katrine Elise Agpalza Pedersen, Kunsthall Trondheim

Norwegian artist Sissel Blystad has teased the possibilities of yarn for over a half-century, and her exhibition Topografi (Topography) at Kunsthall Trondheim gathers 19 artworks,  produced over a period of thirteen years from 2005. All are individual spheres composed of thick yarn glued in elaborate curves on a reinforced background.  

Blystad has never considered herself a “textile” artist, although she worked with tapestry until giving up the loom in 2002. Seeking other forms of expression, the artist came across a surplus stock of shoelaces, which she glued in neat lines and curves onto the polyester fabric backing material Vlieseline. Blystad then proceeded to glue thick wool yarn (Hoelfeldt-Lund ryegarn), which she has dyed by hand over the years from working with tapestries, onto different support surfaces, allowing her to test the pictorial potential found through this method. In 2005, Blystad relied on wool rugs as a substrate before turning to the use of cardboard as well – each media is differentiated by her own terms Limetepper (“glue-blankets”) and limepapp (“glue-cards”). It is not the yarn or its materiality that interests her alone, but the colors, shapes, and spaces that can be created with them. Sissel Blystad is laidback, but also resolute: “I’m not an “internal” artist. For me, it’s about space. Space in the image and the optical illusion that is created by all these layers. That’s been my mission, to keep all these layers in order.”

Tending toward abstraction, the artworks evoke various impressions; however, Blystad reads these images as suggestive of natural landscapes and other physical or human phenomena – over any other form of interpretation, such as a means to illustrate psychology. As such, Topografi invites the audience to an immediate and sensual encounter with the contours and rhythms emerging from these terrains. 

Curator: Kaja Grefslie Waagen, Kunsthall Trondheim

Both exhibitions are supported by the Fritt Ord Foundation.

For more information and press images, please contact 
Kaja Grefslie Waagen, Producer and Communications Manager: kaja [​at​] kunsthalltrondheim.no / T +4794143704