THEME 2024-2025
THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT US
Our theme 2024-2025. For two years, we will examine the northern situation.
Many people are looking to the north, including investors, politicians, artists, curators and activists. We who live and work in the north are experiencing an ever-increasing interest in our place, our issues, our environments and raw materials.
The so-called green transition, fossil-free steel, hydrogen production and battery factories are different components of a strong political rhetoric. It is also a transition that gathers the expectations and hopes of many.
We are seen and taken up in a national and international consciousness. It is a special situation to live in a place where many interests meet. Geographical renegotiations have long been a part of the north, and these are now intensifying. We do not feel fully involved.
The theme comes from a feeling that became increasingly strong. The feeling of being watched, examined, illuminated and interpreted, without being involved in formulating it myself, grew stronger. After countless guided tours in the northern perspectives, it suddenly didn’t feel quite right anymore. Some media and local incidents reinforced a feeling of exclusion, in the midst of a tailwind that should have been pleasant. We began to wonder which voice was ours. Which gaze created the image of us and our place, were we ourselves part of that gaze? Were we involved in creating knowledge about our time, as well as our history?
In Dom pratar om oss, a situation where colonial structures are once again becoming increasingly visible will be illuminated.
The theme should be seen as a platform for learning and investigation where curiosity starts from here. With the absolute belief that it is artists and art that investigate and process the most important and current issues, we allow artists from the northern regions to take a place in our program. Galleri Syster’s room will be a center in the theme for exhibitions, conversations and meetings. A kind of inventory of what northern contemporary art looks like and what issues it touches on. With a responsive approach that starts from here, several interests and questions are enabled to take place, instead of letting ourselves be drowned out by the usual strong image of our experiences. Somewhere in the middle of the northern situation, Galleri Syster seeks a broader picture, where a spectrum of lives and realities takes place and is formulated.
Now it is simply time for us, we who live here, to examine our place ourselves, both geographically and mentally. Galleri Syster initially asks itself questions that will be carried over during the theme years, questions that can very well be reformulated, deleted or replaced along the way.
We are collaborating in 2024 and 2025 with Katarina Pirak Sikku.