BERGEN.- Marking the Year of Queer Culture in Norway, KODE Art Museum presents a comprehensive exhibition featuring works ranging from classical antiquity to the present day. The Queer Gaze will explore and highlight the diversity of queer perspectives and narratives that can be found in the museum collections.

In 2022, it is 50 years since sex between men was decriminalised in Norway. This important milestone in Norwegian history will be commemorated throughout the whole country with a Year of Queer Culture. By presenting narratives of gender and sexual diversity from both the past and the present, KODE Art Museum will throughout the year challenge the invisibility that shrouds the stories of LGBT+ people.

In Norway, scant research has been done on queer art, culture and history. KODE want to inspire conversations, debates and engagement that in turn will influence how the museum work, collect and present art in the future.

The expectations of gender

In different ways, The Queer Gaze will display how queer experiences, over which a veil has often been drawn, are an important part of our history

The Queer Gaze takes KODE’s collection as its point of departure. Curators Mathias Skaset and Bjørn Hatterud have reviewed the museum collections with a new and queer gaze, highlighting works and narratives that the Norwegian public has yet to see and hear.

How do queer traces manifest themselves in the field of art? The selected works holds narratives or references that challenge the established boundaries of what is regarded as ‘normal’ or ‘natural’. The works range from classical sculptures to contemporary art, addressing topics like camp aesthetics, cruising culture, gender fluidity, Greek myths and 19th-century spinster culture.

Through 160 works of art The Queer Gaze presents stories about expectations of femininity and masculinity, about gender identities and about same-sex love and desire.

Queer Vikings and norm-breaking women

A new perspective on art paves the way for alternative interpretations of both meanings and the context in which motifs can be understood. In popular culture, the Viking Age is often portrayed as straight and ultra-masculine. But the Vikings’ culture was maybe queerer than we imagine.

One example is the myth of Balder’s death, where the Viking god Loki transforms himself into a giant woman named Thökk, one of many examples of Loki’s ability to change his gender as well as his form and appearance. In many ways Loki can be considered a queer character.

The exhibition also presents several well-known artists connected to the Norwegian spinster culture of the 1800s, such as Harriet Backer and Kitty Kielland. Both Backer and Kielland had significant careers in a male-dominated world. They broke with traditional expectations of women and family life and lived together for over 40 years.

Another featured artist is Catharine Kølle, Norway’s first known female painter. She was active in the early 1800s and was also the country’s first female hiker, wandering alone by foot through Norway and Europe, otherwise unthinkable for a woman of her time. On her many journeys she painted over 250 dizzyingly detailed watercolours, which are presented in a selection in the exhibition.

A continuous battle for freedom

Past meets present, concrete narratives meets creative utopias—The Queer Gaze aims to challenge the boundaries within which art can be interpreted.

The exhibition also points to a human rights battle that has still not been won for everyone:

“For those of us who are queer, this exhibition may be perceived as particularly important,” says curator Mathias Skaset.

“It presents in many ways how the struggle for sexual freedom has been met with forces that try to limit the opportunities to live openly and freely. Enthusiasm has been met with violence, pleasure with punishment, but the hope of a better reality has driven and still drives the struggle forward”.

The Year of Queer Culture at KODE will feature various events and activities throughout the year. Part two of the exhibition The Queer Gaze will open after the summer, with works by specially invited contemporary artists.