BERGEN.- This spring, Kode Bergen Art Museum presents a major solo exhibition of visual artist Lotte Konow Lund, offering a comprehensive survey of her diverse practice through more than 100 works spanning from her early career to the present day.
Lotte Konow Lund (b. 1967) has been a distinct and influential voice on the Norwegian art scene since the late 1990s. Through a diverse yet cohesive practice, she has established herself as one of the leading artists of her generation.
The extensive exhibition What She Said, curated by Ana María Bresciani, traces Konow Lund’s artistic practice from her student years to the present and includes several newly produced works. Throughout her career, Konow Lund has consistently explored and interrogated pressing social issues—class and feminism, violence and religion—while emphasizing the role of art as a socially engaged practice.
With precision and sensitivity, Konow Lund employs a range of media, including drawing, painting, video and sculpture, to reflect on our contemporary society and the times we live in. The exhibition opens with the video installation The Most Wonderful (2000), whose title alludes to the character Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, and an interactive reproduction of the first sound machine used as prop at the Norwegian National Theater, The Sound of Money (2018–19). Her early signature video works (1998–2003) represented in the exhibition explore themes of self-confession and female identity.
A selection of her drawing series expands on Konow Lund’s reflections on everyday life, the body, and the public sphere. In a striking new series of gouache paintings, the artist explores trauma, grief, and healing through fragmented bodies in sleep and darkness. Key themes of political agitation and terror are also explored, including the installation 66 Minutes (2014) and the sculpture Lift, Descend, Carry, Hold, Lay, (2014), both of which address the terror attacks in Norway on July 22, 2011. These works provide a crucial perspective on Konow Lund’s profound social and artistic engagement
Throughout the exhibition, visible traces of confession, recognition, and storytelling reveal the artist’s journey with feminism as both a political and artistic practice. One key influence is the pioneering generation of female artists and writers active in Western Norway in the 1970s, following in the wake of the Bergen avant-garde. Internationally orientated, these artists worked with radical expressions for feminist causes. This historical context is essential to understanding Konow Lund’s artistic position today. At the same time, it represents an important legacy that Kode Bergen Art Museum seeks to highlight.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue including texts by curator Ana María Bresciani, art historian Amy Tobin, journalist and author Lena Lindgren and playwright and poet Cecilie Løveid.
Lotte Konow Lund trained at the National Academy of Arts in Oslo and at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. She is a professor at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Previously exhibitions included venues at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter; the Vigeland Museum; Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires; Wohnmaschine, Berlin; The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and Pratt Institute, New York. Konow Lund has published the books About Art, 25 Conversations with Artists (2021) and The Diaries, January 2014–February 2016.
