SLUTTEN

A duo exhibition by Marie Sjøvold and Charlotte Thiis-Evensen at Dropsfabrikken in Trondheim

The works of Charlotte Thiis-Evensen and Marie Sjøvold in this exhibition take death as their theme. But in this connection the exhibition title – “The End” – is interesting. It points not to death directly, but rather to the end of life. Viewed like this it is as life-affirming as it is about death. How we relate to the way life at some point comes to an end is expressed in a series of specific, but also open works of photography, graphics, video, audio and sculpture. Photography as a medium, with death as an object for realisations of our own temporality, is a recurring art-historical theme, perhaps especially known from the French theorist Roland Barthes, but here it finds a wholly personal form.

In one of the pictures in Sjøvold’s series “I feel so close to everything I lost” we see a woman in a blue blouse with her hair hanging loose amidst a flowery field in the forest. Whether the body is sinking into the field or is rising up is uncertain. Her hands are raised in the air. It is difficult to determine categorically whether we are seeing  the expression of a sense of freedom in all its exuberance, or a solitary waving of her arms. In another picture we see a body that has just hit a water surface, bubbling and sparkling, full of life. At the same time, it is dramatic and quite unclear whether this is an uncontrolled fall or an elegant dive. The photographs show a close-up relationship with the surroundings – the body’s relationship with the ground below, the forest in front and objects by the hands; the body as a sensing, tactile entity. 

We also see this closeness to the surroundings and existence in Thiis-Evensen’s “Portraits”, a series of photopolymers on veneer plates, literally showing close-ups of nature. So close up that the natural materials seem to dissolve and become expressions of quite basic organic processes. The clear distinction between the upper picture field and the plates of pine veneer mark clear breaks between the light and the dark. The flow of the wood fibres finds a resonance in Thiis-Evensen’s video work “ADRIFT”. Within the frame bodies and hair float by, bubbles reach the surface; we glimpse the bottom, ripples in dark water above clear water. Sometimes the motion is forward, sometimes backward. In this alternation various people glide past – entities that can never quite take control of the elements that surround them. And this floating, this rupture, finds its quite firm summation in the audio work “One of a hundred thousand” where Thiis-Evensen first talks to a specialist about her father’s illness, called PSP. As she herself describes it, it begins with a professional account of the illness. She asks the same questions so many children do about the course and hereditary nature of the chronic illness. The form of the dialogue loosens up as the object of the interview proves to be her father, the sick person, who launches into a prosaic conversation about the relationship in the present (“right now you sound fine”) and about the near future (“we’ll come visiting and we can go for walks”). You are happy with life while you are alive, while a diagnosis gives you and the family such ample time to think about “the fact that you’re going to die”.

In the series “Flowers are like the heart cut up”,  Sjøvold has taken her point of departure in the rituals surrounding death, more specifically close-ups of the flowers that remain lying behind after a funeral. Again ordinary objects associated with this familiar ritual dissolve into something else unrecognisable.

Here the way both artists dwell on the handling and treatment of our temporality constantly takes its point of departure in the actual conditions, the tangible entities. These powerful context/text-dependent works are open-ended, and when they are located within the framework of this issue of death, the interpretations are given a direction. They are aesthetic expressions, speaking about how alien it can feel to confront this issue. As when people on their death bed ask for a lipstick or their diary, these images show that we are used to living, not to dying. 

- Gustav Svihus Borgersen, 9 February 2022