A pilgrimage to visit Louise Bourgeois and Peter Zumthor’s Norwegian memorial made for victims of the witchcraft trials hits home.
Karen Gardiner
Karen is a freelance writer from Scotland, based in New York City @karendesuyo
Posted inArt
Unpacking the Legacy of an Indigenous Uprising in Norway
A rich combination of artworks, set in a labyrinth relating art, duodji, books and archival materials, tells the long and anguished story of Norway’s treatment of indigenous Sámi communities.
Posted inArt
Tensions Over Untapped Oil Run Just Beneath the Surface at a Norwegian Art Festival
The Lofoten International Art Festival is in the only part of Norway where drilling for oil is not currently permitted, but that could change.
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Malta Returns to the Venice Biennale After 17 Years
Malta’s pavilion offers a sense of the tiny nation interrogating itself as it steps onto the international stage.
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In Amsterdam’s Red Light District, Street Artists Tell Tourists: “No Fucking Photos”
Though Amsterdam’s sex workers have long reprimanded tourists attempting to take pictures of them, doing some has become much harder in the age of the smartphone.
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Exhuming Edinburgh’s Hidden Stories
EDINBURGH — “Scotland is a canny nation when it comes to remembering and forgetting,” wrote the poet Jackie Kay.
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A Symbolic Wound Takes Shape in Norway to Remember the 2011 Massacre
It has been exactly five years since Anders Behring Breivik murdered 77 people in Norway.
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At a Glasgow Museum, Local Artists Grapple with National Politics
GLASGOW — Seeing these artists exhibited together seems to naturally create a dialogue around national identity.
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An Art Festival on Norway’s Arctic Islands Considers How Humans Are Changing Them
SVOLVÆR, Norway — “Lofoten is at a tipping point,” a local artist told me the night I arrived on the Norwegian archipelago for the opening weekend of the 2015 Lofoten International Art Festival.
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In Malmö, Street Art with a Social Conscience
MALMÖ — The capital of Skåne County, Sweden, enjoys a scenic coastal location, across the Öresund strait from Copenhagen, and has a strong creative output — in the words of one artist I met, it’s Sweden’s best city for street art.
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The Women Tagging and Painting the Streets of Bogotá
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Here, where graffiti is classified as a violation rather than a crime, street artists do not have to hide. Bright murals, often uncompromisingly political, cover public walls, as well as those of home and business owners who, understanding the value (cultural and financial), allow their own properties to be used as a canvas.