Posthumous Tales

Oslo Kunstforening is pleased to present the exhibition Posthumous Tales by Signe Johannessen. Signe Johannessen (born 1978 in Alstahaug, Norway) lives and works in Gnesta outside of Stockholm. She was educated at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Johannessen has been active as an artist in Sweden for more than fifteen years, and this is her first solo exhibition in Norway.

In recent years, Johannessen has been in close dialogue with curator Caroline Malmström about a series of works based on the 1949 archaeological find at Kvarntorp outside Örebro, Sweden, where the skull of a human was found together with: canine jaws; bones from a foal and a pig; a shoulder blade from a cow; and two unidentifiable ribs, all dated to varying time periods.

The first version of the exhibition The Resurrection in Kvarntorpwas presented at Örebro Konsthall in April-May this year. The second version is now being presented at Oslo Kunstforening, and a third version will be shown at The North Norwegian Art Centre, where Johannessen will exhibit in November.

Posthumous Tales is formed from artistic investigations into museum archives and artefacts from archaeological finds, including the Kvarntorp find. In these artistic investigations Johannessen attempts to repatriate, correct, or de-classify the objects from the archives in which they have been held.

The exhibition intertwines the strange Kvarntorp find, with bestiaries from the Middle Ages and with local history into works taking the form of large-scale wooden sculptures, body-adapted, portable works, drawings, and videos.

Here, in the middle of Kvadraturen, an area founded by the Danish-Norwegian king Christian IV, these works invoke both the colonial history of and also the 17th-century relationship between the Nordic countries, Greenland and Sápmi.

This can, in particular, be seen in the sculpted, oversized unicorn horn titled Wet Wand for Future Fires (2023). Today, the unicorn is considered mythological, but during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance the unicorn was seen as a very real being. Unicorn horn, which came from the narwhal's tusk, was at this time one of the most exclusive trade goods, and contributed to Denmark's prosperity, this material they had bought or traded from the Inuit in Greenland.

A series of new drawings titled The Anatomy of the Nasal Flute,mirror the hybrid bodies that are inscribed in Rådmannsgården, the site of Oslo Kunstforening. The 17th century plaster stucco ceiling on the ground floor depicts fantastical creatures, one of which uses its nose as a whistle – the starting point for these anatomical studies of hybrid bodies. Nordic cultural heritage is full of hybrids and non-normative realities that are often dismissed as myths or fairy tales.

In the video work The Seal in the Labyrinth and the Eternal Rest (2016), a seal skeleton that was incorrectly presented in the museum's display cases for over a hundred years is corrected. In the animation Resurrections (2023), a game of chance arouses our curiosity when pieces of bone fly around in space combining and recombining in an endless loop of speculative combinations.

Human and animal bones have been found gathered together at a number of excavation sites around the Nordic region, as if they had belonged to one and the same body. The video Swamp Posthumous (2021) is based again on the Kvarntorp find. In this video, shot at a wetland to evoke the archeological site, archaeologist Christina Fredengren discusses her research into the finds whilst dancers from the Cullberg dance company perform in sculptures suggesting various body parts (Posthumous Tails), creating a dialogue between science, artistic interpretation, and speculation.

How can studies of these transcendental figures provide new perspectives on relationships between species and on how bodies have been controlled throughout the ages? These are some of the questions that Johannessen asks in exploring and breaking down the strict taxonomies and classifications used by archives, by museums and by natural sciences.

The exhibition is supported by Arts Council Norway, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee, Nordic Culture Fund, Nordic Culture Point.

Caroline Malmström (born 1984) is a curator based in Stockholm and has a background in art history and literature. She has collaborated with Signe Johannessen for a long time, most recently as curator of the exhibition Resurrection in Kvarntorp, which was shown at Örebro Konsthall earlier this year and which the exhibition at Oslo Kunstforening builds upon.

Since 2011, Malmström has been one of the artistic directors of Art Lab Gnesta, which connects local issues of ecology, history and participation to larger societal and global processes. Here, Malmström has curated, initiated and led several projects and discursive programs. Malmström has previously worked at institutions such as Botkyrka Kunsthall, Konstfrämjandet and Judiska Teatern, and she is currently working on projects at Carl Eldh's Ateljémuseum in Stockholm.
 
The exhibition is supported by Arts Council Norway, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee, Nordic Culture Fund, Nordic Culture Point.