"This exhibition is a prompt. This exhibition is a map. This exhibition is a conflict, a chorus."

100 YEARS OF CONVIVIALITY celebrates that on 28 October 1921, a group of artists met in a bar in Oslo and founded a social club that would change the fabric that upholds artistic life in Norway – and which continues to mend and weave that fabric, so it never wears thin.

The exhibition features three kinds of works. There are loans from museums and collections across Norway, which tell us about the history of a group of artists organizing and working together, sometimes through animosity and disagreement. There are new commissions that actively converse with the past in material dialogue with those that came before. And there are works that dreamily explore our shared present and possible futures.

Per Inge Bjørlo (1952), Erik Brandt (1897–1947), Marianne Brandt (1893 – 1983), Marte Eknæs (1978), Finn Faaborg (1902–1995), Yngvild Fagerheim (1942), Brit Fuglevaag (1939), Else Hagen (1914–2010), Marius Heyerdahl (1938–1979), Åsa Jungnelius (1975), Iver Iversen Jåks (1932–2007), Christine Sun Kim (1980), Linda Lamignan, Lars Laumann (1975), Per Jonas Lindström (1955), Elise Macmillan (1988), Elina Waage Mikalsen & Magnus Holmen (1992/1991), Mo Maja Moesgaard & Anne Louise Fink (1980/1984), Ahmet Ögüt (1981), Clevon Pran (1946–1997), Elsebet Rahlff (1940), Aase Texmon Rygh (1925–2019), John Savio (1902–1938), Tai Shani (1976), Signe Munch Siebke (1884–1945), Kjartan Slettemark (1932–2008), Håkon Stenstadvold (1912–1977), Willibald Storn (1936), The Alternative School of Economics (establ. in 2012) and Silje Figenschou Thoresen (1978).

For 100 years, Unge Kunstneres Samfund (Young Artists’ Society) has been an essential organ in the Norwegian cultural body. As an artist union, UKS has a defining role in shaping cultural policies and as a social support network and venue for experimental contemporary artistic expressions, UKS remains a great influence on the young and vital development of art in Norway. Founded by artists, for artists, on 28 October 1921, UKS is now in its 100th year.

Throughout its lifetime, UKS has been a space for art to be developed and discussed, for new collaborations to be born, and for old formats to be discarded. At UKS, young artists have presented collective projects and provocative attacks on central concepts in culture, as part of a continuous rethinking, updating, and renewing of contemporary art. In the spirit of collectivity and critique, the 100th anniversary not only celebrates the young art of the past century, but also highlights how the conditions for art have been pushed forward by the young artists themselves - and points to what still needs to be done.

The anniversary program, titled 100 YEARS OF CONVIVIALITY, will present an ambitious publication, a series of seminars and the exhibition at Kunstnernes Hus.