Forelesning

MAPS TALK: Isabelle Andriessen: A Material Opera

Doing so her sculptures perform over the course of one and several exhibitions, seemingly beyond control. Like a window into science-fictional worlds her works are governed by material entities that appear to be passive or dormant, yet their output reveals a darker agenda.

Andriessen continuously pushes her work to inhabit a liminal space between sculpture and performance in order to address a world attuned to death but thriving with new organs and sex, as if to suggest how new entanglements might flourish in a non-human world. As uncanny amalgamations of mechanical relics, extraterrestrial formations, and chemical waste, her performing sculptures obscure the interface between the animate and inanimate, while offering a glimpse into a grim future reality. A reality in which materials have agency, enabling them to control certain entities and bodies, transgressing them into resilient species withstanding violent environments. Her work alludes to loss, grief and horror, in order to redefine what an apocalypse can be. Understanding it as not necessarily (or only) a space for destruction but rather a continuum state in which there is apocalypse upon apocalypse, or catastrophe upon catastrophe - an inhospitable darkness that is also a fertile source.

All together, her sculptures become a cast in a sticky landscape of a semi-choreographed orchestra. Their eerie material realities form alien or grotesque anatomies inspired by ‘weird’ and ‘fluid’ life forms; they creep, crawl, ooze, penetrate, cling to, and react with one another as if their metabolism is infected. They physically respond to the surrounding atmosphere while triggering chemical processes within each other, thus manifesting their agency through continuous interaction and change. These processes unfold in phases choreographed over one or several exhibitions; Some of these slow material performances last a few months, while others continue to develop over years. They showcase the passage of time, disturbing notions of permanence, posterity, and the primacies afforded the restoration and collection of art.

She was artist-in-residence at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (NL) (2017-2019). Besides she participated in the Arts & Science Honours Program of the KNAW Royal Dutch Academy of Science and Academy of Arts in 2016. Andriessen has presented solo exhibitions at institutions including Kunsthall Trondheim, Trondheim (NO) (2026); Kunsthal Gent, Gent (BE) (2025), De Pont Museum, Tilburg (NL) and CAN Centre d’Art Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel (CH) (both 2021). Group exhibitions include Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, Warsaw (PL) (2026); MO.CO. Montpelier, Montpelier (FR) (2025); Middelheimmuseum, Antwerp (BE) (2024); Moderna Museet, Malmö (SE) (2023); FRONT International, Cleveland (OH) (USA) (2022); GAMeC, Bergamot (IT); Modern Museum of Art, Warsaw (PL) (both 2020); 15th Lyon Biennial, Lyon (FR) (2019); Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL); Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (FR) (both 2018). Her work has been featured in FlashArt, Kunstforum International, Art in America, Art Forum, Frieze, CURA Magazine and MOUSSE, amongst others.

MAPS TALK is a public forum initiated by the Master’s Programme in Art and Public Space (MAPS), bringing together artists, researchers, students, and the public for critical dialogue and interdisciplinary exchange.
The programme is free and open to all. For accessibility requirements or other needs, please contact stiaaadl@khio.no

Formsalen is located directly below the canteen. Signs will be put up in the canteen on the day to guide you there.