Archive2021

Ane Graff

Ane Graff (b. 1974, Bodø, Norway) lives and works in Oslo, Norway. Graff’s artistic practice is informed by feminist new materialism – a re-thinking of our material reality in which a process-oriented approach to matter plays an integral part. Graff views human beings as part of an expansive material network, and considers the body as a meeting place, where different materials and narratives meet. Her work traces the lines of Western intellectual history to ask how the ideas of human exceptionalism and Cartesian dualism relate to the health and ecological disasters we face today, and what seem to be their implications for material bodies. Recent exhibitions include KIASMA, Finland (2020); Rhizome/New Museum/Stavanger Kunsthall collaboration 7x7, Norway (2020); Art Encounters Biennial, Romania (2019); and 58th Venice Biennale, Italy (2019).

Project Description

Ane Graff presented a series of sculptures at The Lewis’s Building. The Goblets (Chronic Fatigue, Brain Fog, Depression, Memory Loss, and Generalised Anxiety Disorder) (2021) are based on her research into the environmental risk factors that influence mental states. Examining the social economic and physical environments shaping mental distress, Graff explores situations and historical events that have created the epigenetic changes. Each goblet is filled with materials (“pollutants”) found in our everyday lives that arelinked to the disease, including food, medications, cosmetics and road dust. The Gut-Brain Axis (2020) and The Cardiovascular System (2020) consist of smaller sculptures on top of “drooping” granite tables. Inspired by feminist new materialist thinkers, Graff considers materiality to be relational and process-oriented, characterised by permeability, entanglements and relations, rather than reduced to a single identity. Positioning the body as a meeting place contained within a larger system, Graff’s sculptures are bodies in themselves, where entangled narratives and materials meet, both conceptually and materially.

Supported by Office for Contemporary Art Norway and Royal Norwegian Embassy in London.

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