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With support from Konstnärsnämnden / Iaspis fotogalleriet.no/exhibition/victoria-verseau
Courtesy Julie Hrnčířová/Fotogalleriet.
“The work of Victoria Verseau is novel and evocative. Still, it also insertsitself in a long tradition of art and photography history that, since at least the 1850s explored images as dreams, nightmares, and aspirations, connecting identity formation to social structures inconscious and unconscious ways. She explores worlds of emotions, ambitions, and lived experiences we have interiorized in Modernity through Freud and the likes with whom we have learned to experienceas individualized subjects stream of the interior world. Her artworks activate unconscious feelings, which render images of suppressed fears and emotions tangible, addressing the vulnerability of dreamlike spaces, juxtapositions of subjects, and imagery. Victoria Verseau expresses different forms of freedom by guiding us into domestic and intimate aesthetics, opening spaces for demonstrating in dependence and imagination in contrast to medical, architectural, and conformist standards. Her storytelling moves between small towns and urban centers, ideal spaces of our contemporaneity, and spirals into a great network of conjunctive disciplines, bodies, and countries.” - Antonio Cataldo, director Fotogalleriet Oslo.
Courtesy Victoria Verseau.
I specifically designed the architecture for the exhibition, drawing inspiration from mausoleums, with their narrow passages and hidden rooms. The exhibition served as both a commemoration and a personal journey through the grief following the loss of my best trans friend, Meril.
The first room visitors encountered was bright and minimalistic, featuring only a 13-meter-long podium with a sculptural work leading toward a dark doorway. Upon entering the portal, visitors were guided through a narrow passage into the deeper, darker spaces. In the second room, where a video work was displayed, two narrow doorways led to small passages that opened into two separate, partially hidden rooms—one illuminated by purple UV light, the other by red neon. The fifth and final room stood out for its experimental and messy aesthetic, in contrast to the minimalism of the earlier rooms. It showcased a multitude of collected objects arranged on platforms, lit by fluorescent light.
Courtesy Julie Hrnčířová/Fotogalleriet.
Courtesy Victoia Verseau.
Courtesy Julie Hrnčířová/Fotogalleriet.
Courtesy Julie Hrnčířová/Fotogalleriet.
Courtesy Julie Hrnčířová/Fotogalleriet.
Courtesy Julie Hrnčířová/Fotogalleriet.
Courtesy Julie Hrnčířová/Fotogalleriet.
Courtesy Julie Hrnčířová/Fotogalleriet.
Courtesy Tiril Flom/Kunstavisen
This picture is from the "side room", one of the five rooms the exhibition was created for.
The other rooms were more minimalistic and "clean". In this room I wanted it to be more messy and experimental, almost like a studio where finished and unfinished works and processes were going on.
An investigative manner.
A plentitude of collected (hoarded) objects were placed on square plexi- and linoleum platforms. Some of them lit by fluorescent lamps from below resembled light tables. I thought of the light tables on which x-rays prints are placed in hospitals, to see bone fractures, tumors etc. Things that occur, grow and change with time. I see all the collected objects as a kind of materialization of time, an ever-growing collection, a way of trying to capture what is irrevocably gone and impossible to regain. The "light tables" were switched off and on at different intervals, creating a rhythm, a kind of count indicating the passage of time.
Courtesy Julie Hrnčířová/Fotogalleriet
Courtesy Julie Hrnčířová/Fotogalleriet
Courtesy Julie Hrnčířová/Fotogalleriet