Marita Isobel Solberg

The opening night offers both food, drink, music and performance. Solberg has invited several of her collaborators to contribute to the program: Tromsø-based collective MmmMaras, Finnish musician and artist Risto Puurunen, musician Erik Nilsson, US performance artist Steve Vanoni and Estonian performance group Non Grata.

For several years Marita Isobel Solberg has made herself noteworthy via performances redolent of existence, intensity, and musicality. In her first solo exhibition she do not, however, limit herself to performance, even though the performative is central in everything she does. From the time she received her education at Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo (Oslo National Academy of the Arts) she has had a strong sensitivity for materials and a practice that allows her to broaden herself across an exhibition space with a series of elements that complement her own presence. Solberg says she hopes to take us along on a journey.

“A journey of the senses into innermost being, into what is around you, into communication’s endlessness and the symphony of existence. The starting point has been sounds and melodies in the languages and dialects encircling me throughout my life, set off against places and themes such as form, natural materials, color, light and sound, woven together with thin white threads.”

Solberg actively uses her own background, weaving elements from Sami and northern Norwegian culture into her works. In the exhibition she has gathered voices from her own circle and made them the raw material for compositions and improvisations. Varied dialects and multilingual territories have given Sápmi and North Norway great linguistic diversity and vital traditions for oral storytelling. What happens when we generate additional fables and locate stories in new contexts?

Marita Isobel Solberg is a musician and visual artist working with sound, performance, and installations. She has a master’s degree from Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2007). Since childhood she has also had voice training and explored various musical genres. Solberg is originally from Manndalen in Troms, Northern Norway. She is based in Tromsø, but lives a nomadic existence on the Norwegian and international art scenes. Across several years she has had guest-artist residencies in such places as The Watermill Center (Water Mill, New York), the Art/Life Institute (Kingston, New York), The Performance Studio in London, Fordypningsrommet at Fleinvær, Norway, and Pushkinskaya Art Center in St. Petersburg. With her strong connection to the region of Northern Norway, she has among other things played the role of director of the fictive Sámi museum Sámi Daiddamusea in the award-winning museum performance at RiddoDuottarMuseat and Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum in 2017. In recent years she has been strongly active as a performance artist and has participated in a series of projects and collaborations.