Spring and fall program 2023

Founded for artists by artists in 1921 by the Oslo avant-garde, UKS (Unge Kunstneres Samfund / Young Artists’ Society) is one of Norway’s core institutions supporting new productions and exhibiting the practices of young, contemporary artists.

Centred on two large-scale exhibitions this spring and fall, UKS uncovers the workings of our intimate relationships with nature, knowledge and each other. In parallel, UKS continues our programme of informal social functions, intellectual exchange and attempts at friendship: MINIBAR evenings and the walk-in-workshop HOW TO PRACTICE?, at which rotating practitioners—including artist and curator Tatiana Lozano and fashion designer and textile artist Admir Batlak—serve up their tricks, tools, fears and desires for artistic survival over hot soup. As summer days shorten, we introduce Close Readings, a monthly reading circle in collaboration with art historian Sara Yazdani, reading and thinking together with and through texts, artworks and objects, with its first season focusing on infrastructure and climate action.

Thora Dolven Balke, Tarek Lakhrissi and Inari Sandell: Moon in your Mouth
May 27–June 25

Curator Max Hannus (b. 1984, Finland) explores consent, desire, intimacy and emotional labour in exhibition-making. Presenting works by Thora Dolven Balke (b. 1982, Norway), Tarek Lakhrissi (b. 1992, France) and Inari Sandell (b. 1991, Finland), Moon in your Mouth considers consent as a methodological tool, and how to host or mediate different agencies in the presentation of artistic work. If intimacy is seeing and being seen, what is required for seeing to take place; how does one access intimacy?

I CONSENT—Summer School
May 30–June 1

Growing from the exhibition Moon in your Mouth, UKS, Frame Contemporary Art Finland and feminist pornographic film production collective Bedside Productions co-host I CONSENT, a three-day summer school in Oslo. Convening around consent, complaint and intimacy, the programme offers a tender environment to explore alternative, safe and loving ways of relating, particularly in the context of arts institutions and cultural production.

Taking place at UKS, the school supports a small cohort to learn alongside one another for three days, including an evening programme open to anyone tenderly curious. Session hosts include Bedside Productions, curator Max Hannus, writer, artist and musician Johanna Hedva, artist and activist Raju Rage and body philosopher Vishnu Vardhani.u

KVAE & BARK: The Soft Forest Is Ours On Loan
September 16–November 12

With cautious feet and open mouths, KVAE & BARK—Karoline Sætre (b. 1992, Norway) and Øyvind Novak Jenssen (b. 1988, Norway)—move through a variety of landscapes. Attuned to nature’s cycles, they observe, forage and refine; they retrace their steps and repeat them time and again. Like new buds on a tree, KVAE & BARK’s UKS exhibition brings changing seasons into view. The Soft Forest Is Ours On Loan offers curious eyes and adventurous tastebuds a sensuous installation and a series of performative gestures. Simultaneously an exhibition, a workspace and a site for community-building, parts of the works extend beyond the exhibition space and into Oslo’s urban nature—making the city’s vegetation both backdrop and material for conversations spanning place, sensitivity, sustainability and identity.
 

Moon in your Mouth and I CONSENT are part of Rehearsing Hospitalities 2023. Moon in your Mouth is curated by Max Hannus and I CONSENT is curated by Yvonne Billimore, Jussi Koitela and Miriam Wistreich.

The Rehearsing Hospitalities 2023 programme is organised in collaboration with The Showroom (London), UKS (Unge Kunstneres Samfund / Young Artists’ Society, Oslo), Vera List Center for Art and Politics (New York), Finnish Cultural Institute in New York and Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland. The programme is part of the EU-funded project Islands of Kinship: A Collective Manual for Sustainable and Inclusive Art Institutions. 

Moon in your Mouth and I CONSENT are supported by Nordic Culture Point, The Finnish-Norwegian Cultural Institute (FINNO), Fritt Ord, and Kulturfonden för Finland och Norge.