The Strongest Girl in the World

The Strongest Girl in the World is the first Scandinavian solo exhibition of artist Rona Yefman. She works in photography, video and performance exploring identity through a range of human encounters and experiences. The exhibition juxtaposes work from two of Yefman’s iconic series from the last decades.

Rona Yefman describes photography as “a way to find freedom and passion. The camera allows things to happen, gives permission to explore different kinds of life and existence”.

Yefman’s work often includes long term collaborations with people who have formed a radical persona. These personas inscribe the iconic and the absurd of our time in their own ways.

The exhibition presents two extensive bodies of work; Let it Bleed (1996-2010) with artist Gil Yefman and Pippi L. – The Strongest Girl in the World! (2006- 2009) with sound artist Tanja Schlander. Both bodies of work have resulted from ongoing close dialogues and collaborations between the artists over many years. This exhibition presents unseen and new works that have been introduced into the installations.

In both bodies of work we revisit protagonists over the course of several years. During these revisits, the collaborating artists recall shared characters both real and imagined, and dust off old memories which are then rearranged and remixed. Yefman’s work blurs the boundaries between the document and the documented, artist and muse, real and fiction.

In Let it Bleed we follow the first person Rona Yefman was inspired by, her younger brother Gil Yefman. In 1996, she began photographing him as a way to reveal their close relationship and their mutual desire to live exterior to the norm. During the most fragile and complex part of this work she documented Gil’s transformation from male to a female, and then her transformation towards living beyond gender. This work challenges the notion of gender roles as well as familial ones, and is a personal archaeological journey that reveals the siblings’ symbiotic existence as collaborative artists. Their dynamic sways between the dreamy and the everyday, the make-believe and real. Props and poses leave the viewer pondering over a documented personal space – and stage.

Let it Bleed was first presented at Participant Inc in New York City in 2010/11 and was published as a limited edition artist book in 2016. The installation at OK includes One of Us, a new crochet doll by Gil Yefman along with the collaborative works Collage pillow (One of Us) and Smiley Curtain.

Since childhood, Yefman has envisioned the classic children’s hero Pippi Longstocking as her alter ego because she is the strongest girl in the world and a rebellious character with socially subversive ideas. The Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren wrote this children’s story in 1944 to inspire her daughter to understand radicalism and defy the conventions of normal feminine behaviour. In collaboration with the Danish sound and performance artist Tanja Schlander Pippi has been transformed into a contemporary female hero. Using Pippi’s own notion that she is ‘the strongest girl in the world’ they document, among many things, Tanja’s absurdist attempts to move the huge concrete wall that separates Israel from the West Bank in the projected video «Pippi L. at Abu Dis». The relationship between the character and the person behind it becomes blurred, similar to the biographies of Pippi and Tanja. The installation includes a sound piece by Tanja (room 2).

A concert with Tanja Schlander will take place on September 13th with a group of Oslo-based musicians. The concert is produced in collaboration with and as part of Ultima – Oslo Contemporary Music Festival.

An exhibition walk-through with Rona Yefman will take place Sunday, September 15, at 2-3 pm.

The exhibition includes a collaboration with Fotobokfestival Oslo 2019, curated by Christina Leithe Hansen.

The exhibition has received generous support from The Artis Grant Program. Oslo Kunstforening is supported by the City of Oslo and Arts Council Norway.