Heidi Øiseth
From Dust to Dawn
The Skylight Space
20.02.—30.03.2025

Dawn marks the time before sunrise, when forms gradually emerge – a parallel to how memories can be diffuse yet surface through processing and distance.

Heidi Øiseth’s wall-mounted works in From Dust to Dawn are monumental and densely layered, carrying a bodily weight. Her installations, com­posed of drawings and handstitched textiles, explore memories, time, and embodied experience.

Øiseth uses old textiles tied to personal and solitary spaces – towels, bed­clothes, pillow­cases, and personal clothing, all bearing traces of dust, everyday stains and wear. These textiles construct an atmo­sphere of privacy and con­ceal­ment. Her intricate works tell a story about, and drawing from, stored experiences, latent memories, and a lingering unease that time erases again and again through the act of covering and hatching. Memories are magnified, both intrusive and obscured, shielded by the materials. Some traces can be concealed, while others insist on resurfacing – fragments of something only the body remembers.

From a distance, the works appear indistinct – like memories fading over time – but up close, the process of reworking becomes apparent. The process involves both application and erasure: Øiseth builds layers of liquid ink on a cotton canvas, forming painterly deposits, which she then shades with charcoal and pastel. Layers of textile fragments and drawings generate contrasts and suggest hidden depths. Through a meticulous process, the surfaces gradually become sealed, making revisions impossible.

In addition to the wall-mounted works, Øiseth has made sculptural objects, compact with layers of re­pur­posed textiles. The same layers emerge, covering traces of happenings and shadows. Trauma, oppression, power­less­ness, and shame are encap­sulated within the body as knots and stored away.

The textiles interlace past and present, providing a space for reflection on the impact of war, dis­place­ment, and disaster. Traumatic events persist as memories across gene­rations, and the artworks explore how such memories shape both individuals and communities. We must learn to live with what cannot be erased. At the same time, this deliberate, patient work carries a sense of longing – a continuous search for hope and new paths forward.

Heidi Øiseth (b. 1961) is a visual artist who lives and works in Oslo. She studied at Oslo Tegne- og Maleskole (1993) and Einar Granum Kunst­fag­skole (1995), and has received artistic mentor­ship from several of Norway’s most renowned artists. Her most recent solo exhibitions have been at Kinokino Kunstsal in Sandnes (2023), Larvik Kunst­forening (2021), and Tegner­forbundet in Oslo (2018), among others. She has participated multiple times in Øst­lands­utstillingen in Oslo, Fredrikstad, and Kiel, Germany (most recently in 2017), as well as the Autumn Exhibition at Kunst­nernes Hus in Oslo (2009), The Drawing Biennial, Oslo (2010), the Autumn Exhibition in Copen­hagen (2021), and the Spring Exhibition at Kunst­hall Char­lotten­borg in Copen­hagen (2020). In recent years, her works have been part of group exhibitions at Lens Gallery in Beijing (2023) and Shanghai (2024), China.

Øiseth extends her thanks to blacksmith Jan Remøe at Verkssmia in Asker.

The exhibition is supported by Arts Council Norway.