Ekely, 2021

Mapping edges of space is an ongoing project where I use the space of Edvard Munch's atelier to create an understanding of the space and exploration into  nostalgic connections to Edvard Munch and his paintings. As a Norwegian, born in the US, and moving to Norway in my teens, Edvard Munch was a cultural figure that in many ways connected an understanding to Norway and a feeling of home. The paintings of Edvard Munch are very often related to nature. Remembering back, when looking at his paintings as a child, and loving how he painted trees. They lived their own life, they were always bending , curved  slightly as if in movement. Munch fascinated me, I felt as if he was climbing in those trees with me. Now, as an adult, viewing his paintings,  the same relationship exists. His portraits of people are fascinating. The expressions in their faces. There is a lingering presence of something that is also absent. Connecting to the way Munch shows human expressions in faces,  I find "a longing to connect"  into their faces. This may be my own nostalgic interpretation, of wanting to know a complete stranger from a past time. Still I want to explore further how  Munch conveys emotions in his paintings that connect universally. One can connect to his paintings universally and individually in each our own ways. From a nostalgic perspective, the paintings connect to an emotion of a memory of place, of identity, and belongingness. 


What is interesting to start with is to explore how Munch used nostalgia as a theme in many of his paintings.  "The Sun" , is one of his most famous paintings, which is also an ambiguous painting. The sun can be understood as a symbol of the eternal and universal. Munch himself described it as " I saw the sun rise above the rocks- I painted the sun" . The painting awakens memories of the sun and the sea, which is something everyone can connect to, the sun and water, a universality exists. At the same time, the paintings are connected to earlier times, no mobile phones and so on existed back then, and therefore the paintings also have a nostalgic effect on today's viewers.


The main focus is to explore nostalgia further through Munch, by being in this nostalgic place of Munch's studio; the visible and invisible  forms and structures of the studio space surrounding me, and digging further into personal and universal nostalgic connections to his paintings. Looking, touching, listening, wandering around at Ekely. Like a form of geological framework, the drawings and paintings are connected to the past through the physical space of the old building. Here I critically reflect on nostalgia existing both as a true emotion connected to memories of the past, but also as something that does not exist anymore, being critically aware of that I can never exist in Munch's time. I can never go back.  A reclaiming of space must exist through my own identity and belonging.

The exploration started in 2014 which was the first year I started painting at Ekely. I have returned every year, trying to make sense of this encountering of Munch and nostalgia. One cannot go back in time and meet Munch, however the studio exists as a tangible cast of an encountering of the present space connected to the past. One can return to the same space. The studio is what remains, immortal in a way through its physicality. A tangible landscape of memory. The memory of the past resides in the buildings structures. Here, the thick walls penetrating the past into the remaining presence. Become one with the present. Here the exploration  begins. 

The painting series explores a personal nostalgic narrative through a series of visual dialogs that connects to Edvard Munch, his space, and paintings.