Birgit Hagen

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In Birgit Hagen's practice, it is as if the texts and textiles seamlessly slide into one another, where words, threads, letters, warp and weft form part of a continuous conversation that can seem to never end. According to the artist herself, her tapestries were an attempt at reproducing, through weaving, a mood or an experience. The compositions came into being directly in the loom, with no preliminary drawings.

Høstvinduet «treet» (Autumn Window ‘The Tree’) is from a series of window-like tapestries in which Birgit Hagen has depicted momentary experiences of nature. This she has done with the help of materials such as rough yarn and strips of diverse textiles: cotton, glittering fabric, shiny curtain tie-backs, knitted garments, flannel, cords, ribbons and upholstery fabric from a folding chair. In Vier ogtytebær (Willow and Lingonberries), the words VIER (willow) and TYTEBÆR (lingonberries) are woven in large letters in the two-part composition in red and blue. The words NATTVERD (Eucharist or Communion) and VIN (wine) have also found a place in the weaving, the back side of which reveals a poem about celebrating Communion on a mountain, with a night blue sun, amongst frozen red berries and willows with glistening silver leaves.

Hagen worked systematically with an extensive archiving of her own work, where texts for her own carpets were painstakingly written down both by hand and on a machine before they were cataloged together with texts about her own practice, book projects, sketches and travel journals, sometimes the texts were embroidered directly onto the carpets.

The project at LIAF is produced through collaboration with Hallingdal Museum, which is a part of the consolidated museum foundation StiftelsenBuskerudmuseet, and the foundation StiftelsentilFremme av Birgit Hagens kunst, which has been most generous in sharing knowledge about Hagen’s artistic practice.

Birgit Hagen (1912–2004) grew up in the village of Vats in Ål, Hallingdal, and continued to live and work there for most of her life. Her first solo exhibition was at Gallery Per in 1949. In 1960 Hagen participated in the Tapestry Triennale in Milan and received a diploma for the work Moder jord (Mother Earth). In November 1970 Hagen exhibited at the National Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Oslo. In 1977 she received a grant for an artist residency at Cité des Arts in Paris. 1980 saw her applying for a residency at the art academy in Oslo, her aim being to paint, and in 1982, at 70 years of age, she continued her studies at the art academy in Bergen. From weaving, Hagen eventually shifted her focus to painting and drawing and was productive for yet another decade of her life. In 2002 she bequeathed her entire production – about 50 tapestries as well as paintings and manuscripts – to Hallingdal Museum in Nesbyen. In recent years Birgit Hagen’s works have been exhibited in the exhibition Ode to a Dishrag, Hymn to a Tiger – Norwegian Textile Artists 1977–2017, at Kunstnerforbundet in Oslo (2017) and in the spring of 2022, Drammens Museum presented the first solo exhibition of Hagen’s works since the 1970s.