SERENDIPITY
Winking man finding his Winking houseSeptember 02 2021
At Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Art and public space master program, we were asked to propose a project for Nitja art center in Lillestrom, where the transformation from town to city is taking place now and it is easy to notice.
By looking on the map we can see this gray organ, which is growing fast taking over more wooden houses and gardens, replacing them with gated residential Highrise, privatizing emotions, dulling the senses and erasing diversity as Richard sennet describe them in Flesh and stone.
Walking the periphery, we see the strong contrasts from town to city.
For Nitja my research was based on serendipities that happened by walking around, meeting things and people.
The highlight of all was finding the WINKING HOUSE.
Although it was abandoned and under destruction, it kept being sassy, winking through the same type of curtains that i have been installing on empty windows of vacant buildings for the past 3 years in different places around the world.
I contacted the company demolishing the house, collected the debris, cleaned it from nails and used it to rebuild the wink to be exhibited at Nitja New art center.
On the day of the exam , my classmate Yildiz, who worked on her project in collaboration with Morgenstellet a rehab center in Lillestrom, invites the patients to come see the exhibition, and one of them recognized the wink.
“This is my house’ he says. Jarle recognized his house from the curtain pattern (85000 is the population of Lillestrom, 1/85000 chance for this to happen)
The big opening was that Jarle is the Winking Man, since he has one paralyzed eye_caused by the trauma and pain after his army service with the united nations in Lebanon.
Photos of the slides used in my presentation at KHIO auditorium for MAMBA and MAPS students.