Victor Lind
Contemporary Memory
09.11.12 – 03.02.13
09.11.12 – 03.02.13
The exhibition Contemporary Memory with the Norwegian artist Victor Lind will take place at Kunstnernes Hus from 9 November 2012 to 3 February 2013. The exhibition will be the largest presentation of Lind's artistry to date, and will for the first time present the work cycle Contemporary Memory in its entirety.
Some works of art have their own ability to twist the knife in the wound. The power of such works lies not only in the fact that they create discomfort, but that this discomfort lingers. (…) This is a characteristic of the work and a measure of its complexity and ability to make the viewer stop and think again. And this quality is clearly present in the works that Victor Lind has spent almost 20 years creating in the Contemporary Memory cycle.
About the exhibition
Lind was a central figure in the radical art group GRAS in the 70s, but since 1994 has devoted himself to the cycle Contemporary Memory. The work has a specific historical background, the deportation of Norwegian Jews during the Second World War and the legal process afterwards. The works examine and stage the events of the past and shed light on an obscure chapter in Norwegian war and post-war history. At the same time, Contemporary Memory illuminates uncomfortably current areas of conflict in the present day linked to abuse of power, xenophobia and racism. Through a visual language that is both complex and communicative, Lind creates a kind of memorial or counter-monument. These shed light on fundamental philosophical issues regarding guilt and disclaimer of responsibility, and the possibilities for a humanitarian political commitment. As the exhibition's title alludes to, Victor Lind wants to keep contemporary memories visible and alive with the project.
The exhibition's focal point is two historical figures and the choices they made during the Second World War. One was a police inspector who served the Norwegian state during the war, and the other is a gardener at a nursery on the outskirts of Oslo. One of them made the decision to send 532 Jews to the concentration camp, the other helped to help over 1,000 persecuted individuals, half Jewish, across the border to Sweden. Charles Esche writes the following in his catalog text for the exhibition: Lind pulls the two men out of their everyday environments and focuses the spotlight on them, and based on their everyday path choices he creates an epic story. Their actions and the consequences of the choices they made turn into a mythological tale of right and wrong that not only concerns life in Oslo in 1942, but also many other situations and moments in human history.
The exhibition is curated by Ida Kierulf in collaboration with external curator Per Bjarne Boym. The exhibition will be followed by a catalog with texts by Charles Esche, director of the Van Abbe museum in the Netherlands, Marianne Heier, this year's festival exhibitor in Bergen, as well as Per Bjarne Boym and Ida Kierulf.
The exhibition is followed by an international film program curated by Maria Fosheim Lund and Maria Moseng who are film scholars and editors at WUXIA – a new Norwegian film magazine and a screening platform for film and video.
