8 November – 15 December 2024
Opening hours:
Thurs–Fri, 16–19
Sat–Sun, 12–16
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Since 2006, BABEL has been Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder’s (LKV) artist-run exhibition space for contemporary art. After more than 18 years and 200 exhibitions in the same venue in Mellomveien, we will move into a newly refurbished exhibition space in the former gymnasium building at LKV in the autumn of 2025. Now we would like to invite you to join us for the last exhibition in our current premises to celebrate BABEL’s present, past and future with us. Warm welcome!
For the final show at the old BABEL, Rina Eide Løvaasen presents an intermezzo between two projects, with a composite organism in stone as the connecting element between the two. When Løvaasen travelled with contemporary dancers to record performances in places that are on the verge of vanishing, stones were brought back home. A collection of these stones has taken the form of an organism dependent on co-operation for survival.
This display of interdependent objects is inspired by the symbiotic structure of the Siphonophorae – an order of marine cnidarians. These polymorphic and complex organisms consist of many individual specimens that join together to form a large, floating colony, where each individual has a specific structure and function. This makes the colony resemble a single organism, with the individuals functioning like organs contributing to maintaining a common livelihood.
The interdependency and reciprocity of the Siphonophorae is the starting point from which the ongoing project grows, in the form of rhizomes. These forms propagate further as geo points in nature, where the stones will be returned. In the exhibition the geo points of Yugoslavia’s futuristic Spomenik monuments are marked as stars on a large-scale digital jacquard weave. Here, the monuments sit in a country that no longer exists, like stars in the sky that have already burned out.
A weave is a canvas is a textile hosts an eternity that is the immortal jellyfish, Turritopsis dohrnii, in oil painting and embroidery. The exhibition also includes the audio and video work from the disappearing places, and live performances by Chollada Phinitduang and Thomas of Norway, running throughout the opening weekend.
Rina Eide Løvaasen is artist in residence at Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder (LKV) for November–December 2024 and her exhibition will be the final one at BABEL’s current premises before we are moving the gallery to the former gymnasium in LKV’s courtyard.
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The exhibition is supported by The Fund for Performing Artists (Fond for utøvende kunstnere).