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The Materiality of White

Project Manager: Marte Johnslien

Popular scientific summary

Protagonisten i prosjektet 'The Materiality of White' (MoW) er det hvite pigmentet Titandioksid (TiO2). MoW vil synliggjøre hvitfargens materialitet gjennom keramiske arbeider og arkivmateriale, analyser av pigmentets norske historie og undersøkelser av det hvite fargestoffets fremtid i et kritisk perspektiv.

Bakgrunnen for prosjektet er norsk industrihistorie og oppfinnelsen av metoden for fremstille TiO2 av Farup og Jebsen, 1909. Metoden etablerte det hvite pigmentet på verdensmarkedet fra 1918. Fargen hvit leses av våre blikk som noe immaterielt, men det hvite pigmentet setter dype avtrykk. Det utvinnes av ilmenitt i Rogaland og prosessen medfører irreversibel og omfattende skade på naturen. Etter videreforedling i Fredrikstad reiser materialet tilsynelatende usynlig i et globalt nettverk av systemer.

Det inngår i maling, plastposer, fiskeprodukter, godteri, solkrem og millioner av andre produkter som vi benytter på daglig basis. I nyere tid benyttes TiO2s fotokatalytiske egenskaper til å nøytralisere nitrogenoksid og hevdes å skape luftrensende overflater.

I vestlig kultur representerer fargen hvit renhet, uskyld, makt og fremskritt. I sitt kunstneriske arbeid vil Johnslien kritisere symbolikken ved å trekke hvitfargen tilbake til sitt mineralske opphav og sitt geografiske utspring ved å bearbeide den i keramisk skulptur.

Hvordan kan historien om verdens mest brukte pigment, fremstilt av norske fjell, være ukjent i Norge? Hvilke implikasjoner har pigmentet hatt i den moderne verden? Og hvordan skal vi forholde oss til dette 'smarte' materialet i fremtiden nå som produksjonsprosessen er i ferd med å endre status fra ufarlig til miljøskadelig?

Målet for prosjektet er å synliggjøre pigmentets materialitet og allestedsnærværende, og å bidra til kritisk tenkning rundt fargen hvit og dens mineralske opphav. Synliggjøringen skal oppnås ved å bearbeide materialet i keramisk skulptur, presentere de historiske funnene, samt utarbeide teoretisk og kritisk refleksjon.

Academic summary

The chemical compound titanium dioxide (TiO2) circulates extensively through our material, biological, and economic systems, most of the time completely unnoticeable: in the food we eat, the paper we print on, the paint on the wall, and our iPhone chargers. The substance was originally discovered and patented as a white pigment by Norwegian chemists Peder Farup and Gustav Jebsen, and production for the global market began in the mine Titania AS in Sokndal, Norway, and in the factory Kronos Titan AS in Fredrikstad, Norway, in 1916. Revolutionizing the colour industry, the TiO2 patent brought into the market a pure white paint that resisted miscolouring due to dirt and rust; TiO2 has been called “the whitest white” and its material properties are inextricably related to invisibility, durability, and homogenization. 

Throughout the 20th Century, the material was increasingly used in combination with other colours (as coating for concrete, glazing for ceramics, and additive in plastic) thereby changing the aesthetics of surfaces in art, architecture, and design—its extreme covering ability made surfaces smoother, brighter, and more opaque. After a hundred years of mining, the extraction of TiO2 has left an irreversible change in the local landscape: The environmental trace of mining modernism consists of a vast cut through the surface of the earth and a grey artificial desert of mining waste. Do we need our world to be more white?

'The Materiality og White' is the first large-scale research project that will connect the challenging topics: whiteness, technological innovation, and mass-exploitation of natural resources in a single case study. The project will do this through an interdisciplinary research design grounded in an original and creative humanities approach that merges art history and artistic research. MoW will study the Norwegian innovations the chemical compound titanium dioxide and the white pigment titanium white in a historical, aesthetic, and critical lens—focusing on how the innovations transformed surfaces in art, architecture, and design—in order to show how aesthetic—and thereby societal—transformation is driven by technological development.  

Project facts

Project title The Materiality of White
Project manager Marte Johnslien
Oslo National Academy of the Arts
Project participants

Ingrid Halland
University of Bergen

Start date
End date
Project status Active
Department Art and Craft
Funding
  • The Norwegian Agency for International Cooperation and Quality Enhancement in Higher Education
  • Norwegian Artistic Research Programme
Total budget NOK3,000,000.00
Related projects
  1. How Norway Made the World Whiter
  2. New Material Histories
Results
  1. Ingrid Halland & Marte Johnslien: TiO2 Synergies: Methods in arts-based humanities (2023). Lecture. More information
  2. Ingrid Halland: From White to Earth (2023). Academic lecture. More information
  3. Ingrid Halland: 'Hånden bag det hele' av Heidi Laura (2022). Interview. More information
  4. Ingrid Halland: From White Modernism to Human Tissue: The Toxic Entanglements of Titanium Dioxide (2022). Academic lecture. More information
  5. Ingrid Halland & Marte Johnslien: The Materiality of White (2022). Academic lecture. More information
  6. Ingrid Halland & Marte Johnslien: How Norway Made the World Whiter (2021). Lecture. More information
  7. Ingrid Halland: Material Withdraw: How Modernism Made the Surface Invisible (2022). Academic lecture. More information
  8. Ingrid Halland: White Entanglements: On Teaching Titanium White (2021). Academic lecture. More information
  9. Ingrid Halland: From White Walls to Human Cells: The Surface Sustainability of Titanium Dioxide, 1916-Present (2021). Academic lecture. More information
  10. Marte Johnslien: White to Earth (2020). Visual Arts. More information
  11. Marte Johnslien: Circumstantial Sculpture. REFLECTION (2019). Doctoral dissertation. More information
  12. Marte Johnslien: Hvitt til Jord (2020). Art exhibition. More information
  13. Marte Johnslien, Cecilie Skeide & Ingrid Halland: A Square on A Sphere (2018). Exhibition catalogue . More information