RE-MEMBERING, Walking with trees — floating inbetween

2025

Sentrum senter for samtiden (SESESA), Oslo

By practicing inefficiency, slowing down and listening over time, Margrethe Pettersen creates a stronger connection to the Sami cosmology. In Sami, sound and voice are the same word — Jietna, everything has a voice if you take the time to listen. Unlearning Western structures and ways of thinking also takes time, and has become part of her practice.

In the process leading up to this exhibition, she has built relationships with trees in her surroundings. Walked with the trees, held them, gained strength and exchanged energy. Pettersen has processed materials from uprooted and pruned fruit trees collected outside her studio. Organic materials have an important place in her praxis. In this context, the process and the work speak both about climate change, adaptation, old knowledge exchange and care for the tree. She also brings in elements from previous works, as the processes and praxis build on each other, just like the years in a tree.

Margrethe Pettersen works on a long-term project about rivers and water. ‘Remembering With Rivers’ began as a survey of the city of Oslo’s ten rivers, where one year would be dedicated to each river, a project that now has evolved into a more perceptive and perspicacious approach towards floating water, and collaboration. The exhibition also shows ‘Láibmat II’ — a performance made in collaboration with a German river and three other artists (Dana Tomeskova, Maia Birkeland and Christina Disington), shown as part of the New Ecologies biennial in 2024.