October 7, 2022–January 22, 2023
The sisters and artists Annette and Caroline Kierulf have significantly contributed to the revival of printmaking in Norway. To Make a World, a comprehensive exhibition of their work organized in close consultation with the artists, opens this fall at the KODE Bergen Art Museum.
Throughout their careers, Annette Kierulf (born in 1964) and Caroline Kierulf (born in 1968) have used woodcuts. To Make a World was designed as a visual essay, or a pictorial world, that challenges preconceived notions and hot-button issues.
The first mass media in Europe was made up of woodcuts, which were used to create posters, flyers, and catchpenny prints to disseminate propaganda, satire, and news. The Kierulf sisters take inspiration from this unassuming quality as well as allusions to the medium’s rich history as an artistic form. The artists themselves have called their practice “woodcut as cultural critique.”
The artists’ labor-intensive approach involves printing in extremely small quantities on self-carved and painstakingly puzzled big woodcut forms. They have settled into separate studios that are physically separated, on the remote island of Rady (Annette) and in the city of Bergen, however they frequently collaborate on shows (Caroline). They each contribute a single work from their own oeuvres that has a feminist perspective for the KODE exhibition.
Landscapes form a dominant element in the work of Annette Kierulf, and in this respect the question: “What form should a feminist re-reading of the traditional landscape take?”
Caroline Kierulf has explored conventional views of gender. With reference to a women’s magazine from the 1940s to 1960s she questions: “Can we find ourselves reflected in things from the past in a way that allows us to see our present reality more clearly?”
The forces, whether ideological, economic, social, or cultural, that control and mold us as humans are of great interest to the artists. However, it is up to us—the viewers—to make deductions and work out the puzzles found in their pictorial cosmos.
Curated by Annette Kierulf, Caroline Kierulf, and Jorunn Veiteberg, To Make a World mostly features contemporary art. The exhibition is a component of KODE’s presentation schedule highlighting significant artists with ties to Western Norway.
A significant publication that complements the exhibition includes essays by Patricia Berman, Jorunn Veiteberg, and an interview with the artists conducted by Lotte Konow Lund.
KODE Bergen Art Museum
Rasmus Meyers allé 9
5015 Bergen
Norway
T +47 53 00 97 00
[email protected]