Kategori: Exhibition

Lap-See Lam – the fourth recipient of the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award – is presented in a major solo exhibition. Through the use of various media, the Swedish artist explores history, myths, and the present through atmospheric storytelling. The exhibition will include spatial works as well as new pieces.

Lap-See Lam works across a wide range of media, including video, installation, sculpture, and performance. She explores questions of identity, migration, and belonging through narratives that emerge from the Chinese diaspora in Europe.

Lam’s multilayered practice weaves together history, myth, and technology. She creates atmospheric worlds where cultural heritage and the contemporary meet, and where traditional forms of storytelling—such as Cantonese opera and shadow play—intersect with digital media.

The exhibition at Henie Onstad will be Lam’s largest presentation in Norway to date, featuring two large shadow-play works installed together for the first time as a unified spatial installation, in addition to new works created especially for the exhibition.

The exhibition is curated by Isabella Maidment and Xiaoyu Weng.

The exhibition presents the breadth of a rich artistic practice and highlights painting, drawing, sculpture, illustration, and scenography. At the same time, it revisits the oeuvre with a fresh perspective, emphasizing the social and historical contexts that shaped Fjell’s work.

Kai Fjell was at the height of his career as an artist in the 1930s and 1940s, a time when art often became political and reflected the unrest of society. After his debut at the Oslo Art Association in 1932, he painted somber works with strong social engagement, using motifs that commented on challenges within society. During the war he continued to work despite shortages and restrictions, creating many of his most compelling works in the decades surrounding the Second World War. Inspired by international modernists as well as Norwegian folk art, Kai Fjell worked across far more media and fields than has previously been emphasized.

The exhibition at Henie Onstad ranges from his well-known depictions of women and “mother and child” motifs to Fjell’s innovative scenography for the National Theatre and art projects in public spaces such as Bakkehaugen Church, Fornebu Airport, and the High-Rise building in the Government Quarter. The exhibition is curated by Kathrine Lund and Martine Hoff Jensen.