Exhibition
Avgang 2025: Taylor Alaina Liebenstein Smith / A feeling of longing that freezes and thaws
A feeling of longing that freezes and thaws is Taylor Alaina Liebenstein Smith's individual MFA graduation project.
In her solo exhibition A feeling of longing that freezes and thaws, Taylor Alaina Liebenstein Smith presents an immersive installation exploring the poetics of permafrost. Smith is particularly interested in exploring how we engage with permafrost physically and emotionally, through our own bodily perceptions of temperature.
The exhibition combines permafrost samples projected via 35mm slide projectors and magic lanterns, a 16mm film, cooling elements, and field recordings from the sampling process. Permafrost – ground that remains frozen for two or more consecutive years – is extracted as thin, fragile cylinders of ice and soil, pushed from a long metal tube hammered into the frozen ground. Throughout the exhibition period, these projections will gradually transform as all permafrost samples thaw, and some refreeze.
Most people never come into direct physical contact with permafrost. It is held at a distance from our human bodies, somewhere between 2 and 300 meters beneath the earth’s surface, mostly north of the Arctic Circle. As it thaws and transforms from solid to liquid to gas, permafrost releases methane, CO2, mammoth carcasses, ‘zombie viruses’, chemicals, preserved human bodies, and forgotten technological artifacts. As thawed permafrost leaks upwards in the ground, it can also mix with surface substances that our bodies absorb and release, from forever chemicals to human tears. Like a forgotten memory, permafrost begins to haunt us.
This exhibition is Smith’s MFA graduation show from the Academy of Fine Art at Oslo National Academy of the Arts. A feeling of longing that freezes and thaws is the result of a collaboration with researchers from the University of Oslo’s Center for Biogeochemistry in the Anthropocene (Mats Ippach, Anfisa Pismeniuk, Eira Carlsen and Alexander Eiler) and dancer and choreographer Tim Winter. Most of the permafrost samples are estimated to be around 900 years old and were collected during a fieldwork trip in Finnmark, where Smith accompanied the researchers.
Taylor Alaina Liebenstein Smith (b. 1993) is an American, French-naturalized visual artist exploring the poetic intersections between analog and biological media. Through collaborations with scientists, poets, dancers and other species, she works to deconstruct perceived boundaries between scientific and artistic knowledge. In addition to her MFA studies at The Academy of Fine Art in Oslo, she holds an MA in Cultural Mediation from the École du Louvre and a dual degree (BFA and BA in Art History) from Boston University. Her work has been exhibited in Norway, France, Finland, Germany, Spain and the U.S., including at Paris’s Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle and Finnish art centers MUSTARINDA and KulttuuriKauppila. A member of the Finnish Bioart Society, her works are also included in the French National Collections.
Opening at Atelier Nord Thursday March 6, 18.00-20:00
MFA graduation projects
The final year Master students will present individual graduation projects in different spaces at KHiO and around Oslo. These projects will be diverse in form and will take place at different times during the spring semester. Some of the projects will open simultaneously. The graduating students will also collectively explore the group format in a curated group exhibition.
