House of Norway

About

The exhibition HOUSE OF NORWAY brings together works of art, design, craftsmanship and architecture in order to create special constellations that surprise and propose a new way of seeing.

It can be read like a journey of a special kind: with first-time and recurring encounters, moments of astonishment and contemplation. With new discoveries where what has already been seen seems familiar. A journey through a country characterised by different landscapes, climates and population densities: the South and West of Norway, with its coastal areas, lakes and forests, is distinctly different from the snow tundra of the Finnmark in the North or the Arctic climes in the Northeast; life in Oslo and the other few large cities is different from that in the rural areas. Accordingly, it is not only the realities of people’s lives in the respective places that differ, but also the inspirations for their artistic and creative work. And so the existence of an Indigenous ethnic group whose cultural area, Sápmi, stretches across Norway, Sweden, Finland and parts of Russia, offers artists and designers other themes than the landscapes in the Telemark, which are determined by deep valley incisions and dark forests – which in turn lead to other forms of expression and meanings attributed to the works.