In Plain Sight: Queering Nordic Modernism

Text: Anna Bonsink and Giulia Calvi, winners of AKO Curatorial Award

‘It takes some strength of soul – and not just individual strength, but collective understanding – to resist this void, this nonbeing, into which you are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard.’

Adrienne Rich, Blood, Bread, and Poetry. Selected Prose, 1979–1985

If the question of identity is a complex one, the question of queer identity requires a profound and intimate understanding of oneself. And it is through this process that one is often faced with the inevitability of history, and the knowledge that, for queer people, a piece of the puzzle will always be missing.

When dominant society tells a story about how the world is supposed to look, how people should be, and you don’t recognise yourself in it, what follows is a moment of intense bewilderment. It speaks of the realisation of not-belonging, and the void that’s left in its place.

Historically, museums supposedly had the aim of preserving anything and everything that’s worth something to humanity. Or that’s what we’ve always been told. Museums are the guardians of our shared heritage: they represent where we come from and what we are, the very story of how the past has formed the present – how we became us.

And so, if there is no one in our shared past, no one in our museums or our libraries that looks like us, that has lived a life similar to the life we’re living, that looked like us and loved in the same way: if we can’t find a past because there isn’t one, how can we imagine ourselves a future?

This is why stories about people like Marie Høeg and Bolette Berg, Siri Derkert and Adrian Gösta-Nilsson are so important. It’s why this exhibition came to be: because there is a past. There always has been. But it’s waiting in places we were never told to look, it exists in the gaps between the stories that have always been told, between the words that dominant society likes to repeat. It is there, hidden in plain sight, waiting for someone to look closely enough and say, ‘So this is where you’ve been all this time.’

What follows are the stories of four of the artists included in the exhibition, who lived from the late nineteenth century to the present day.

Christer Strömholm, Gina and Nana, Place Blanche, Paris, 1960. The Tangen Collection.

Marie Høeg and Bolette Berg

© The Preus Museum Collection.

Marie Høeg with a cigarette. © The Preus Museum Collection.

Marie Høeg casually posing in her woolen underwear, ca. 1895-1903. The Preus museum collection

Marie Høeg posing with her brother Karl in the studio, ca. 1895-1903. The Preus museum collection

Marie Høeg as a young boy with a cigarette, ca. 1895-1903. The Preus museum collection

In the 1980s, 440 glass negatives were found in a barn in Hadeland, just outside Oslo, Norway, that had once belonged to Marie Høeg (1866–1949) and Bolette Berg (1872–1944). A box labelled ‘Private’ contained a collection of photographs of the two women and their intimate circle of friends. These photographs, taken at the end of the nineteenth century, challenge cis and heteronormative expectations of portraiture, explore cross-dressing, and subvert traditional gender roles.

Now considered iconic figures of Norway’s queer history, Marie and Bolette were lifelong partners. They met in Finland, where Marie worked as a photographer for a number of years after completing a photography apprenticeship in Brevik, Norway.

In 1895 Marie and Bolette opened a photography studio in Horten, a busy naval base near Oslo. Their studio activities seemed unassuming and conservative. Given the presence of the Norwegian Navy, there was a high demand for official portraits, as well as photography at remembrance services and social engagements. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that two women who were well versed in the art of staging themselves in portraiture knew very well how to live a life outside the accepted social norms, while their fellow townspeople were none the wiser.

This does not mean that Bolette and Marie weren’t active in the social battles of their time. Both women campaigned for women’s rights their whole lives. Marie founded the Horten Discussion Association and the Horten Women’s Council. When they left Horten eight years later and moved to Oslo – which was known as Kristiania at the time – the two set up a publishing company, Berg og Høghs Kunstforlag A.S., which released books like Norske Kvinder, a history of Norwegian women in three volumes.

In the negatives from their private collection, it seems that Marie particularly enjoyed being the subject of their experimentation, while Bolette preferred to be behind the camera. In some of the photos Marie is deliberately taking on a masculine role, subverting gender expectations and displaying behaviours – such as smoking and drinking – that would have been considered improper at the time. In one photograph she smiles playfully while bending over, clearly about to do a somersault. In another she smokes a cigarette while dressed like a young boy, wearing a hat, while in others she wears a fake moustache.

Some of the negatives show us a glimpse of the women’s community, with friends portrayed in the photos in the same playful manner. A striking series of photographs shows three unknown women dressed in traditional feminine clothing while playing cards and drinking. They are with Marie, who’s dressed in a much more masculine manner. In another series, Marie and a masculine-presenting friend experiment with cross-dressing.

What we can glimpse from these photographs is an extremely intimate picture of a world that would otherwise be difficult to imagine. It is a powerful reminder that while history might try to tell a specific story – a story that everyone believed, until a box of photographs was found in a barn in the 1980s – in reality nothing is ever quite as it seems. Marie and Bolette are proof of this.

Siri Derkert

Siri Derkert (1888–1973) was a pioneer of Swedish twentieth-century art: her early cubist works were integral to international modernism, and her later commissions for public spaces were radical in the way they addressed the notion of public establishment through their political subject matter. Derkert’s artworks respond to her position as a woman living in the early 1900s, advocating for women’s liberation as well as environmental issues, raising issues that are just as relevant today. At the time, these themes were controversial; Derkert was far ahead of her time. Throughout her life she became well known as an ardent activist.

Siri Derkert grew up in Stockholm. Her father was a businessman in the textile industry and her mother was a seamstress. From a young age, Derkert was set on becoming an artist. She enrolled in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1911, where she challenged the conservative status quo by initiating a protest against the rule that female students were not allowed to draw nude male models.

After completing her studies, she travelled to Paris with her friends and fellow artists Ninnan Santesson and Lisa Bergstrand, where they became part of the Nordic artists’ circle. In Paris she attended the Académie Russe and Académie de la Grande Chaumière, tentatively finding her own artistic language. In 1915, in southern Italy, Derkert painted her first cubist studies, one of which was Mandolinspelande flicka.

Siri Derkert, Mandolinspelande flicka, 1915. © Siri Derkert / BONO 2023.

Siri Derkert's best-known work is Ristningar i naturbetong (Carvings in Natural Concrete), placed at the Östermalmstorg metro station in Stockholm. Photo: Jonas Bergsten / Wikipedia.

Back in Sweden, Derkert attended the Fogelstad Women’s School in Sörmland – a school run by a group of women, many of whom had fought for female suffrage. The courses it offered aimed to educate women to participate in politics and inhabit their new roles as voting citizens. At that time Derkert created a large number of drawings portraying the women she met, who had all been involved in the early movement for women’s suffrage. She became increasingly politically engaged, and in a 1948 paper in Ny Dag (New Way), she wrote a fierce critique on the expectations around the role of women in the home.

Over time, Derkert’s artworks contained more and more explicit political comments, and in the 1950s she incorporated clippings from newspaper articles on environmental damage and other current events in her collages. While these collages draw on her earlier cubist style, the texts gave a more political dimension to her work.

In the late 1950s Derkert began to produce public art, using a technique of drawing and carving in concrete. Her best-known work is Ristningar i naturbetong (Carvings in Natural Concrete), a monumental design for the interior walls of the Östermalmstorg metro station in Stockholm. The concrete relief includes phrases from anthems such as ‘La Marseillaise’ and ‘The Internationale’; the word ‘peace’ written in fifty languages; personal writings; and the names of important female historical figures, such as Sappho, Hypatia, Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir. These are combined with semi-abstract illustrations of women engaging in everyday activities, in the style of prehistoric wall carvings, scribbles and impromptu graffiti. The placement of the piece in one of Stockholm’s most bourgeois areas made it controversial: when it was unveiled in 1965, it incited lively debate – as it continues to do.

An Interview with

Jo Ravn Abusland

Photo: Johanne Augland

Jo Ravn Abusland (b. 1976) lives in Kristiansand, Norway, where he was born and raised. Abusland trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bergen and Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee. He works with a wide range of materials and techniques; themes in his work relate to identity and difference. Plants in various forms are almost always part of his works. This interview was conducted in February 2023, and explores topics around identity, queerness in art, and community.

Could you tell us something about your background? How did you develop your interest in art?

After high school I lived in Madrid for a year with a Catholic Spanish family. Working for them was a way for me to learn a new language while figuring out what to do next. I have always had some art projects going, but I was always afraid of not being able to support myself economically. I did a year of Spanish language and Latin American studies at the University of Bergen, and a year of art history. I figured out that I was always sketching and planning projects in my notebooks, so then I applied to an art school. After two years there and after taking some other subjects at the university, I started my diploma at the Art Academy in Bergen (now KMD).

When you first started making art, what kind of pieces were you making?

I did my very first painting in kindergarten. I remember we got to pour thick paint onto a piece of MDF. We were then able to make the colours mix by holding the MDF and letting the paint run in different directions. I was totally into it and looking forward to the next time we did it, but of course it was a one-off. In school we cut out some geometric shapes from plastic foil, and we were given paint in different colours to make prints on textile bags. I remember the excitement on choosing the different shapes and colours that would go together, and building the image one shape and one colour at a time. I thought it looked amazing, and was very pleased with how things worked. I had been completely submerged in this, and to my surprise everyone else had made cars, people or other stuff. I was laughed at because my work was totally abstract. ‘Abstract’ was not a word any of us knew at the time. I still have both these pieces. But the art projects I started later were creating an interactive embroidery programme and setting up a mobile art gallery.

Are there any artists and themes in particular that influence your practice?

My main influences in my practice are books. Right now I’m reading about non-violence, how what you risk influences your actions, and researching different approaches to creating community. I am influenced by artists, and first encountered work by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller at SKMU Sørlandets Kunstmuseum the ‘Paradise Institute’ project. Since then, I have followed their work, and was lucky enough to get to visit their studio when I lived in Berlin. My main interest has always been installations. And I especially enjoy site-specific work.

Abusland's very first painting from kindergarten.

A textile made by Abusland in elementary school

In the exhibition In Plain Sight: Queering Nordic Modernism the focus is mainly on historical modernist works, but it includes contemporary works from the Kunstsilo Collection to forge a connection between the historical roots of queer art and culture in Nordic countries and the presence of queer artists today. Your work, in a way, also bridges the past and present – focusing on a historic tree and a new tree. Could you tell us more about this work?

This work started when I read about the town square in Kristiansand. My great-grandfather worked there, selling vegetables, from the age of six until he died at the age of eighty. In this book there was a photo of a chair made out of the branches of the old town pine; later it was donated to the cathedral. This led me to a big research binge on the history of this tree. I then remembered being taught that the tree in Kristiansand’s coat of arms also is a pine, although it doesn’t look like one.

Looking into this, I found that in 1909 there were discussions about the tree, which was commissioned by king Christian IV in 1643 as a spruce. But in 1909, it was decided that the tree was a pine. As a trans man, I draw parallels between this and 1 July 2016, when trans people in Norway won the legal right to change gender marker without having to alter our bodies or have our reproductive organs removed.

Do you feel that your queerness has informed your artistic practice? If so, in what way?

Yes – my projects are always about me trying to make sense of the world. I struggled a lot in philosophy class, because we were taught that people like me don’t exist. One of my professors thought this was a valid and interesting view. For me, it was like being told in geography that the world is flat: something not very constructive to dedicate much time or effort to discuss. The way I deal with things I don’t understand is usually by doing research that results in a project. With the political climate as it is now, it made me gravitate to creating community, and looking for ways of having a language to do so, both literally and visually.

Art history has often excluded women and queer people from its narrative, ‘forgetting’ or deprioritising certain groups. Does this history impact your position as an artist today?

I think it has taken me a lot longer to feel like that side of me can be part of my projects and can be relevant. I have often felt reluctance from others to accept queerness in art – as if it is activism, unnecessary, or too much. I think this is because it is visible to people. What isn’t queer is the default, therefore queerness isn’t usually so visible for people– just like any kind of privilege is harder to spot when you have it. But by including all facets of myself in my projects, I think my projects are better, and also more relevant for everyone. The Western canon is a very narrow lens through which to look at human accomplishments. We have to broaden our world view.

For you as an artist, how important is community? And what does this look like in Kristiansand?

As an artist, you can take your work with you anywhere. But being part of a community and having nourishing conversations is very important. A lack of community made me leave Kristiansand at eighteen. I swore never to return. My queerness has always made me question the normativity I saw, but I didn’t find much room to discuss this. Yet ten years later, I returned. I missed the connection I had to nature here. It was my community growing up. In order to be able to move back, I had to think of this town as a new town I didn’t know. I explored it as if it was the first time I had been here. I now have people and colleagues in my community. The community of artists is small, but growing. There are a lot of possibilities here, and if you want to create something it is a good place to be.

This interview was held in February 2023, and has been edited for length and clarity.

Photo: Johanne Augland

A behind-the-scenes shot of Abusland preparing for the collective art project Skeiv kopp (Queer Cup) with Pia Eikaas and Kristine Wessel. The foils were part of an exhibition in cooperation with Kunstreisen and Bane Nor at Oslo Central Station in 2022. Photo: Skeiv kopp.

End notes

This story was written by Anna Bonsink and Giulia Calvi, the curators behind Kunstsilo’s virtual exhibition Queering Modernism. Vew the full exhibition here.

Anna Bonsink

Anna Bonsink (she/her; b. 1998, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) currently works as Programme Assistant at the Zabludowicz Collection in London. She completed her MA in Curating from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London in 2021, and has an interdisciplinary BA from University College Roosevelt in the Netherlands focused on Music Performing, Musicology and Art History. She studied violin at the Sweelinck Academy at the Conservatory of Amsterdam from 2011 to 2016. Her interests lie in experimental music, multimedia performance and club culture, and she is committed to supporting marginalised communities in the arts. Anna lives and works in London.

Giulia Calvi

Giulia Calvi (she/they; b. 1998, Varese, Italy) is a freelance curator, researcher and writer. She has a MA in Curating from the Courtauld Institute of Art and a BA in Philosophy from King’s College London. She is passionate about queer histories, maritime heritage, and the way societal narratives play out in museums; she is hoping to pursue a PhD researching intersectional approaches to the display of material culture from the Golden Age of Piracy. Giulia lives and works in London.