Welcome back 4 January 2025
Sparebankstiftelsen DNBs stipendutstilling 2019
Sparebankstiftelsen DNB's Grant Exhibition 2019
Welcome to the grant exhibition 2019! Oslo Kunstforening and The Savings Bank Foundation DNB is excited to present a grant exhibition at OK for the twelfth consecutive year in 2019.
The three participating artists in this year’s edition are Wendimagegn Belete, Kamilla Langeland and Germain Ngoma.
The Savings Bank Foundation DNB art grant is awarded Germain Ngoma for his works Ladle and Runner (2019) og Licking Sticks (2015-2017). Ngoma recieves a 200.000 NOK art grant.
The jury leader is Behzad Farazollahi, visual artist and founding member of MELK. The remaining members are Randi Grov Berger, visual artist and founder of Entrée, Marianne Hultman, artistic director of Oslo Kunstforening; Mike Sperlinger, writer, curator and professor of theory and writing at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and Elise Storsveen, visual artist.
An exhibition walk-through with the artists will take place Wednesday, January 8, at 3 pm.
Sparebankstiftelsen DNB's Grant Exhibition 2019
Wendimagegn Belete
Wendimagegn Belete
At the archives of three of Ethiopia’s main theatres (Enat Alem Tenu, Emeye Biretuwa and Wa Anchi Adwa) Belete assembled photographic documentation of theatrical productions since 1955.
The photographs tell the story of the theatres’ changing ideologies through multiple political regimes in Ethiopia and the theatres’ use as mediums of propaganda. The Ethiopian National Theatre was originally named Cinema Marconi during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia it was later (1955) named after the former Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I, before being taken over by the communist government and finally, for the last 27 years being operated by the Revolutionary Democratic Front.
Belete has collaged selected fragments of manuscripts, printed propaganda, original theatre costumes and used young performers to re-stage scenes represented in the archival photographs and popular Ethiopian musicians performing fragments of traditional song. This material is composited over a backdrop of digitally recreated monuments, landscapes and architecture creating an ever-changing theatrical tableau of multiple ideologies using theatrical artifice to refer to agitprop theatre, propaganda and the theatrical technique of Brechtian alienation. The collaging is designed to parallel the formation of historical and cultural identities. Significantly, the film is non- chronological and possesses no consistent narrative so as to collapse any conventional sense of time. It is perhaps best understood then as an attempt to understand and layer a fragmented history through time.
Sparebankstiftelsen DNB's Grant Exhibition 2019
Bio
Wendimagegn Belete (b. 1986, Ethiopia) lives and works in Oslo. He received a MFA in Contemporary Art from Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art and creative writing, University of Tromsø, Norway (2017), and a BFA from the Alle School of Fine Art and Design at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia (2012). He works across a variety of media, including video, painting, photography, text and found materials. His works are often about history and identity based on his Ethiopian background. Belete has previously participated in exhibitions at Akershus Kunstsenter (2018-19); LNM, Oslo (2018); Høstutstillingen at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (2018) and Lofoten International Art Festival (2017). Future solo presentations will take place at the National Museum of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa (2020); Small Projects, Tromsø (2020) and LNM (2020). Belete was a recident in the Oslo City Hall artist studios, 2017-2019.
Kamilla Langeland
What is the sound of ice melting, trees burning, birds dying
The sound of extinction, not being born, out of existence
What is the sound of wealth, the sound of power, the sound of privilege
Silent notes
Injustice might sound like the highest pitch from a screaming hawk, or the deep growl from a full grown polar bear
The sound of ignorance is orchestrated by deniers and liars driven by money and power
Ego notes
The sound of inequality is a screaming mob of people fighting for what they believe is right
It is the sound of desperation, hopelessness and sabotage
Lonely notes
Withdrawing into the woods
Sparebankstiftelsen DNB's Grant Exhibition 2019
Bio
Kamilla Langeland (b. 1989, Kongsvinger, Norway) lives and works in Lillehammer, Norway. She is a graduate of the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and of Oslo and the Bergen Academy of Art and Design. Langeland recently presented solo exhibitions at Entrée, Bergen (2019), Noplace, Oslo (2018), MELK, Oslo (2018) and Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen (2015). She has also exhibited at OSL contemporary, Oslo (2019); Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Bærum (2018), CCCOD Tours, France (2017) and Kunstnernes Hus (2016). Future solo- and duo exhibitions will take place at MELK and QB Gallery, Oslo; the latter together with Sjur Eide Aas. Langeland and Aas are the founders of the artist-run space Hypha. The duo was granted Jakob Weidemann Kunstnerbolig and Atelier Ringsveen, 2019-2020.
Germain Ngoma
Ngoma’s works invert the technique of metal casting, from a fabrication process back into a ritual, evoking the mystery of alchemy.
Ladle and Runner uses reclaimed scrap aluminium and overtly references the process of melting down the scrap, tapping with ladles, filling from the crucibles, and the runners (or passages) for letting the molten metal run into the mould. In each of these sculptures we can see an evolution of its formation and its ultimate elevation into an object of significance and refinement.
Similarly, Licking Sticks is created from steel rods used for testing the molten metal in the crucible. In this dipping-process, before the melted metal is ready it will stick to the rod. The layers on each stick are built up from being dipped many times. Ngoma has again used the process of metal casting as a material. He has polished the multiple layers of bronze deposited on the end of the dipping sticks, to refine and invert their status from a procedural byproduct into an object of elemental wonder and beauty.
Sparebankstiftelsen DNB's Grant Exhibition 2019
Bio
Germain Ngoma (b. Zimbabwe, raised in Zambia) lives and works in Oslo. He has worked as a self-taught artist and was trained as a foundry technician, before leaving Zambia to study at the National Academy of Art and Crafts and later at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo. Ngoma has exhibited widely, e.g. at Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (1996), Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (1987), and Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken (1989). Ngoma carries on his experimental art practice in many different media. He is and has been teacher and mentor for many students that have passed through the Academy of Art in Oslo, today a workshop manager in sculpting. Ngoma was instrumental in establishing Norad-funded workshops in Zambia, resulting in young Zambian artists completing their art-studies in Oslo.
Background
Since 1986 Oslo Kunstforening has awarded artists, with the kind support of Sparebanken Oslo og Akershus.
Since 2008, The DNB Savings Bank Foundation and Oslo Kunstforening have awarded grants to Ellisif Hals and Susanne Skeide (2008), Ignas Krunglevičius (2009), Ann Cathrin November Høibo (2010), Kaia Hugin (2011), Marie Buskov (2012), Sandra Mujinga (2013), Ingrid Lønningdal (2014), Andrea Bakketun and Christian Tony Norum (2015), Tor Børresen (2016), Emilija Škarnulytė (2017) and Eirik Sæther (2018).