The Nordic Chapter

Fotogalleriet, Oslo Kunstforening and TrAP are pleased to present a multi-site program of the internationally renowned artist Bouchra Khalili, the result of a collaboration spanning several years. The Nordic Chapter is Khalili’s first solo exhibition in Norway.

The Nordic Chapter memorializes sites of anti-colonial movements, records fleeting encounters between influentially radical figures and draws lines between major sociopolitical thinkers and contemporary oppressed and marginalized communities. The exhibition alludes to monumentally important moments of modern history, the ripples of which are still manifestly emanating around us but whose context and specificity risk fading.

The first part of the exhibition, presented at Oslo Kunstforening sheds new light upon Foreign Office, Khalili’s mixed-media project produced in 2015 in Algiers.

Foreign Office meditates upon the internationalist era in North Africa, investigating the decade between 1962-1972, during which Algiers became the capital of anti-colonial movements of liberation, hosting the headquarters of Nelson Mandela’s ANC (African National Congress), Amilcar Cabral’s PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde), and Eldridge Cleaver’s International Section of the Black Panther Party, a revolutionary, socialist political organization, originally formed to monitor the behavior of Police officers, based in the United States and briefly in Algiers.

Foreign Office is presented at Oslo Kunstforening, along with The Speeches Series (2012-2013), a video trilogy focusing on speech acts, agency, citizenship and class belonging, as represented by members of contemporary migrant communities originating from former colonized nations. A counterpoint to Foreign Office, The Speeches Series examines the continuum of anti-colonial struggles among immigrant communities and citizens of immigrant descent in Europe and the United States of America

The exhibition at Fotogalleriet responds to the exhibition at Oslo Kunstforening with a reflection on the ethics of solidarity as epitomized by influential political activist, poet, essayist, novelist and playwright Jean Genet (1910 – 1986) and his unconditional commitment to oppressed and revolutionary groups. Twenty-Two Hours (2018) is a 45-minute film focusing on Jean Genet and his three-month- long stay with the Black Panthers in the U.S. It also includes The Radical Ally (2019), an artist’s publication offering a visual and textual investigation of Twenty- Two Hours and A Small Suitcase (2019), a photographic series documenting Genet’s suitcases and contents used during his stay with the Black Panthers and Palestinian organisations. The contents of the small suitcases were notes that formed the manuscript of Genet’s posthumous memoirs Prisoners of Love.

Exhibition walk-throughs

Oslo Kunstforening and Fotogalleriet invites you to a program of weekly guided exhibition walk-throughs: 

Saturday 15.08.2020, 2 pm: Fotogalleriet
Sunday 16.08.2020, 2 pm: Oslo Kunstforening

Saturday 29.08.2020. 2 pm: Fotogalleriet
Sunday 30.08.2020, 2 pm: Oslo Kunstforening

Saturday 12.09.2020, 2 pm: Fotogalleriet (Oslo Art Weekend)
Sunday 13.08.2020, 2 pm: Oslo Kunstforening (Oslo Art Weekend)

Saturday 26.09.2020. 2 pm: Fotogalleriet
Sunday 27.09.2020, 2 pm: Oslo Kunstforening

The guided exhibition walk-throughs are free and will be held in Norwegian, but will accommodate for all English-speaking participants.

This exhibition has been made possible through the generous support of the Institut français, ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen), Oslo National Academy of the Arts, The Audio and Visual Fund, Arts Council Norway, The Fritt Ord Foundation and The Norwegian Association of Art Societies.