Ina Hagen
17 Days
Window room
23.02.23—02.04.23

Ina Hagen’s exhibition 17 Days offers a wide emo­tional content through an essay presented in three different formats – a novel, a news­paper, and a video.

Written during her residency at Atelier Kunstner­forbundet, the text’s starting point is the ancient Greek myth about Persephone and her mother Demeter, goddess of the harvest and the cycle of life. When Persephone is abducted by Hades to unwil­lingly become his bride in the Under­world, Demeter, in her despe­ration, causes famine among the humans to negoti­ate with the Olympian Gods for Perse­phone’s release. The des­cription of Demeter’s grief that per­meates this hymn has been of particular interest to Hagen, as well as how this grief works as a prism for the inter­pretation of experi­ence and memory. 

In the exhibition, while reading or listening to 17 Days, a constel­lation of references and personal reflec­tions appears across Hagen’s writing about grief, liter­ature, film, environ­men­tal issues, memory, and guilt. The red threads across this essay reveal a back­ground map of the process of the work.

In the video, Hagen inter­cuts between clips lifted from video adverts for the Norwe­gian state oil com­pany, Equinor, and her own footage. This short loop is accom­panied by a longer sound­track that con­tains a reading of the full 17 Days for multiple voice pitches, that for the exhi­bition is read by Taylor Alaina Lieben­stein Smith. The newspaper divides the essay across three spreads on the wall, leaving some paragraphs visible and some of them concealed in its folds. 

During the exhibition period Hagen will provide a fourth shape to 17 Days through a public reading session, in addition to a screening of her video work Fire Nation (2021) at Atelier Kunstner­forbundet’s Loft. Time and date for both events will be announ­ced.

Ina Hagen (b. 1989, NO) works across digital media, perfor­mance, and communal-making practices. Hagen holds a BFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and partici­pated in the 2021 Maumaus Inde­pen­dent Study Program, Lisbon. She has been selected for several inter­national research- and studio resi­dencies, such as IASPIS in Stockholm (SE), Capacete in Rio de Janeiro (BR), BAR Resi­dency in Barcelona (SE), and Q21 Creative Workspace in Wien (AU). Previous exhi­bitions include Kunsthalle Wilhelms­haven (DE, 2021); Momentum10 at Galleri F15 (NO, 2019); Index Summer Fes­tival in Stock­holm (SE, 2019); and at Insti­tute for New Con­no­tative Action – INCA Seattle (US, 2016) – amongst others. Hagen is actively partici­pating in artist union work, and together with artist Daisuke Kosugi, she co-founded and ran the artist space Louise Dany in Oslo (2016-2020). Since 2016 Hagen has also worked as an art critic, notably for Kunstkritikk.

Thanks to Parabol studio, Blekksprut’n, Nilz&Otto, NOTAM, Miriam Hansen, Ragnhild Aamås, Viktor Pedersen, Sol Archer, Sille Storihle, Ida Madsen Følling, Nikhil Vettukattil.

The exhibition is supported by Atelier Kunstner­forbundet and Notam — Norwegian centre for technology, art and music.