Margrethe Iren Pettersen (born Tromsø, 1977) is a florist and has a Bachelor from the Academy of Contemporary art in Tromsø. She just finished her MFA from the Art and Public Space program at KHiO, and is now based in Oslo.
Pettersen often use a place, a plant or an organism as her starting point in her work. She work process-based and her project is often connected. She collect plants, sounds and other materials, does field-recordings and interview people from different professions (scientist, botanist, biologist). Pettersen seek to challenge the modern perception that divides culture from nature. In giving plants, insects, wildlife, and their surroundings a voice, she is attempting to activate thought processes, both for herself and for others, in order to facilitate a more complex relationship. Interdisciplinary, self-organized and collaboration is keywords for her practice.
Her Sami roots and the oral tradition of knowledge dissemination in the north is methods she brought into her work lately. She looks into different ways of disclosing art. Her work turns out in many different forms and medias, from outdoor happenings, cultivation projects, soundwalks or more traditional pieces in a gallery.
She has been in the board of Røst AIR, Sámi Dáiddačehpiid Searvi (sami artist union), Loftet arbeidsfelleskap (studiocollective in Tromsø), NNBK (North Norwegian artist unioin). She is now active in the board making the new organisation BKA (Billedkunstnerne i Akershus).