Tiril Hasselknippe – Divans (2020/2023)

At a distance from one another and yet in intimate proximity, the apparently immovable objects that combine to form Divans have a gleaming purple-silver coating that invites the viewer to touch, to take a seat.
The sculptures and installations of the Norwegian artist Tiril Hasselknippe (b. Arendal, 1984, lives and works in Stavanger) frequently feature architectural elements, often in anachronistic combinations that refer to different styles, from classical antiquity and Gothic to 20th-century Brutalism. With her mysterious use of materials and colour, her fascination for science fiction also shines through. Like sci-fi, in which timelines and worlds collide, her work opens up a speculative space for social reflection.

The seed for this installation was sown in 2016, a year that, for Hasselknippe, was dominated by Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States. Divans developed further in 2020, a year that was marked by concerns about the safety of her closest friends, amid rampant anti-Black and anti-Asian violence.
‘I wanted to dissect how I, as much as everyone else, was part of a society that had elected a right-wing populist politician. And I wanted to create a space outside of that, in which my friendship with [artists] Kah Bee Chow and Sandra Mujinga could exist.’

The sculptures are made of polystyrene, treated with lacquer paint and epoxy. In addition to these underlying contrasts in materials, the arrangement of the sculptures also raises questions about positioning, about the necessity and (im)possibility of disengagement, about escapism and imagination. This connects the work to the central question that is posed in Eartheaters: how do we live together and survive in times of complex, interconnected catastrophes? ‘If anything remains behind, I hope it’s a tribute to making connections and to forming a family from scratch,’ says Hasselknippe.

Hasselknippe’s participation in Eartheaters is the first time her work has been shown in the Netherlands. Divans has been exhibited only once before, indoors. A previous iteration of the work, Station (2018), is on permanent public display in Lund, Sweden.