Gitte Sætre – Deception in High Places: Woman Cleaning Weapon Industry

Please join Oslo Kunstforening and Transnational Arts Production TrAP, for a seminar and a mini exhibition on art and activism with Krist Gruijthuijsen (Grazer Kunstverein), Susanne Winterling (professor, Oslo National Academy of the Arts), Malin Barth (Stiftelsen 3,14) and Gitte Sætre.

Date: Friday, February 26, 1-4 pm
Location: Oslo Kunstforening, Rådhusgaten 19
Language: English
Light refreshments will be served

Gitte Sætre's latest video performance unfolds on the weapons fair DSEI in London where the world's arms manufacturers and interested buyers meet. Sætre's performance is a reaction to society's double standards where Norwegian and international arms industry earn the big buck on conflicts.

«Woman Cleaning» is a series of video performance based on acts of performative penance, where the artist cleans as a way to purify our collective conscience. To wash or clean is a way to create harmony and take back control of one's surroundings. In «Woman Cleaning« Sætre acts a female character that diligently washes as a way to control or understand the world around us. Her washing cloth takes her to the center of major geopolitical issues. The washing ritual has religious connotations, and the project is driven by feminism, humor and hope for the future.

Krist Gruijthuijsen is a curator, artistic director of the Grazer Kunstverein in Graz, Netherlands, and course director of the MA fine arts department at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam.

He is the co-founding director of Kunstverein in Amsterdam and has organized exhibitions and projects at Manifesta 7, Galeria Vermelho (Rio de Janeiro/ Sao Paulo), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Museum of Contemporary Art (Salt Lake City) and Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), among others.

At the seminar Gruijthuijsen will talk about the American artist Mierle Ukeles practice and Gruijthuijsens own ongoing research about how the relationship between private and public is expressed in artistic practices.

Susanne Winterling is an artists and a professor in fine arts at the National Academy of the Arts, Oslo. She has a background in philosophy and from the artist collective that is questioning the relationship of art to society, hierarchical structures and knowledge production.

Susanne Winterling will talk about «Gestures, cleaning, political ecology and the commons»: Opting for a poetical rather than a power oriented practice she will look at the ecology of the work in the exhibition and the necessity to question “who sings the nation-state” in a tiny heresy as well as a grand gesture. 

Malin Barth is a curator and the director of Stiftelsen 3,14, a non-for-profit exhibition space in Bergen, Norway. At the seminar Barth will hold a conversation with Gitte Sætre. Stiftelsen 3,14 will present an exhibition with Gitte Sætre later this year.

Gitte Sætre works within multiple disciplines; dialogue-based art, performance, video, photography and sound. She has a BA in painting from UDLA, Mexico, and an MA from the Art Academy in Bergen within curatorial thinking. Sætre has been exhibited across the world, and in 2015 her work was shown in Norway, India, Indonesia and Poland.

Seminar program
13:00 Welcome by Brynjar Bjerkem, Marianne Hultman
13:15 Key Speaker: Krist Gruijthuijsen
13:45 Questions, comments from the audience
14:00 Key Speaker: Susanne M. Winterling
14:30 Discussion between Gruijthuijsen, Winterling and the audience moderated by Marianne Hultman
15:00 Coffee brake, possibility to see Gitte’s work
15:15 Conversation between Gitte Sætre and Malin Barth, director Stiftelsen 3,14 in Bergen
15:45 Summary
16:00 The End

The seminar is free of charge.

Deception in High Places: Woman Cleaning Weapon Industry will be on view the weekend February 27 and 28 between 12-4 pm at Oslo Kunstforening.