Larissa Sansour, Amos Rex, Helsinki
The video installation As If No Misfortune Had Occurred in the Night, featured in Larissa Sansour’s major retrospective at Amos Rex, is not a new work. But for me, it stands as the piece that most profoundly captured the state of the world in 2024: almost unbearable. In it, Palestinian soprano Nour Darwish performs an aria blending Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder with the Palestinian traditional song عالأوف مشعل (Al Ouf Mash’al). With the dignity of a queen, she moves through a desolate landscape and a series of abandoned spaces, seemingly outside of time, mourning her daughter. In today’s context, the work resonates with our grief for the thousands of children who have been killed, maimed, and orphaned in Gaza.
Britta Marakatt-Labba, Moving the Needle, The National Museum, Oslo
This unforgettable retrospective of Britta Marakatt-Labba’s meticulous artistic resistance takes shape as thousands of tiny stitches. Through her embroidered images, she conveys Sámi history and culture, protests against ongoing injustices and environmental destruction, and crafts a visual world entirely her own, where fantastical, absurd, and humorous elements are central components. In a year when discussions around the memorial for the 22 July terror attacks have resurfaced in Norway, it was poignant to see Marakatt-Labba’s powerful Utøya installation, Dáhpáhusat áiggis/Events in Time (2013).
Sparks, Lofoten International Art Festival (LIAF), Svolvær
LIAF, along with the Luleå Biennial, is Scandinavia’s oldest biennial and recognises that the most significant art events don’t necessarily occur in or between the established nexuses of power. Kjersti Solbakken’s edition of the biennial presented itself not only as an intriguing exhibition, but also as a site for a range of enriching conversations and encounters during the opening days. There was a video performance in an industrial venue that was far too cold, an experimental concert by Elise Macmillan, daily readings by the poet Cuthwulf Eileen Myles, and an impromptu tour with Hans Ragnar Mathisen, aka Elle-Hánsa/Keviselie. Mathisen also took the opportunity to speak Chinese with the New York and Hong Kong-based artist Wong Kit Yi, and treated everyone to a joik at the closing party, performed in honour of the participating Zambian artists.
