Strong curatorial team

The award-winning curators Karolin Tampere and Torill Østby Haaland create the exhibition. They were both part of the curatorial group for LIAF - Lofoten International Art Festival - 2019, which was awarded the Art Critics Award for best exhibition in Norway.

- A thematic starting point for the exhibition is the different species' ways of being in the world, and the complex relationship between them. This opens up for art that surprises through fabulation, sensuality and surprising juxtapositions, Tampere and Haaland say.

Eight days of art for all the senses

This year, the festival exhibition will show both completely new and older works by a number of artists from the High North, other parts of the country and other countries. A rich program with performances, presentations and talks will take place during the exhibition period in Galleri Nord-Norge.

- We are delighted to have signed this collaboration agreement with NNKS, and look forward to presenting the results of the work in June. Karolin Tampere and Torill Østby Haaland are both very exciting curators, and the festival audience can look forward to experiencing a wide range of art from the north - and of course a program that creates space for conversation and reflection, says festival director Ragnheiður Skúladóttir.

Traditional exhibition

It is a well-established tradition that the iconic Gallery of Northern Norway in Harstad is filled with art during the Festival in Northern Norway. Shwan Dler Qaradaki presented political art in 2016, Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum and The Anchorage museum presented Subsistence in 2017, Hanne Hammer Stien from UiT Norwegian Arctic University created the Department of Nature and Art in 2018, while curator Carola Grahn was behind the exhibition Native @ Home in 2019. In 2020, the exhibition was presented for the first time in the autumn, and then with The Icelandic Love Corporation's perspectives on Harstad artist Ragnhild Kaarbø, curated by Ingeborg Annie Lindahl.

- We have a lot in common with Festspillene i Nord-Norge in the view of work with art in our region and the relationship between the regional and the global. I am incredibly happy for this collaboration with the festival, which gives us opportunities to use knowledge and networks in work with more ambitious exhibitions, says managing director at NNKS, Svein Ingvoll Pedersen.