Anna Daniell 
FOLK SOM ELSKER KUNST [PEOPLE WHO LOVE ART]
31.05.24 – 07.07.24

Over the past ten years Anna Daniell has established herself as a significant voice on the Norwegian art scene. In richly crafted sculpture projects, she explores both art history and popular culture with equal parts seriousness and humour. FOLK SOM ELSKER KUNST is an exhibition that addresses the role and position of art associations in today’s art scene. As a contrast to the large museums on either sides of the city, Munch and the National Museum, Oslo Kunstforening is an established "constant" in the middle. Daniell uses this as a starting point to reflect on the development of the art scene, writing:

"Maybe the intense efficiency, economic imbalance, and the frantic pace of seminars, events, concerts, discussions, and youthful exhibition programs can take our breath away. Has the early nineties’ shopping mall vibe, with the centralization of individual shops and the pushing out of local stores, come to us, the visual arts, too? Ayayay! Whose back is going to break now!?"

Furthermore, Daniell has invited artist Ole Petter Ribe to present Folkearkivet, a research project that collects contemporary folk art. The project is inspired by Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane's Folk Archive (2005) and focuses on practices outside the professional field. Highlights include the Putin doll from the Ukrainian Association, the toothpick sculpture from Bislett by Jan Hugo Eriksen, and the Sædfuck that hangs above the original Sædfuck tag at Bøler by Stian Kallander.

Anna Daniell (b. 1978) lives and works in Nesodden. She is educated from the Academy of Fine Art at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Fontys Academy of Art in Tilburg, the Netherlands, and the European Film College in Ebeltoft, Denmark. Daniell has recently participated in exhibitions at Trondheim Kunstmuseum (2023), Galleri Brandstrup (2023), and Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (2021). She is represented in collections such as The Henie Onstad Collection, The Grieg Collection, and The City of Oslo Art Collection. She has created several public artworks, most recently at the Oslo City Hall (2019) and Bredtveit Prison and Security Institution (2019) and is now in the final stages of an art project produced for the new Radium Hospital in Oslo. Daniell is currently one of ten artists developing proposals for the 22nd July memorial.