Group exhibition presenting 50 international artists in The Knast, a former women prison in Lichterfelde in Berlin from 28 – 30 June 2019. The artists was invited to develop projects for the 50 prison cells, one cell per artist. Freigänger was initiated by Norwegian artist Crispin Gurholt and Norwegian freelance curator Helga-Marie Nordby.

Text about the work:

In the exhibition project Freigänger / Open Prison Støen is presenting 6 pieces from a series of 12 scanographies, with the title We are Flames Which Pour Out of The Earth. The title is borrowed from the book of the same name, a collection of private texts by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, translated into English by J. Gill Holland. The individual titles of the different art pieces are collected from texts within the book, though adjusted and cut to fit into the context.

The stones are from the artist`s own collection and the plants from her private garden. The project has developed over the six last years. For a while her process was an intuitive form of documentation, which gradually developed into an autonomous entity, mirroring the process of another project En Forestilling Om Frihet/A Notion of Freedom that was produced for Ila Prison and Detention Center.

We are Flames Which Pour Out of The Earth meditates on memories, dreams, isolation and self-inflicted reclusion, while also touching upon the notion of intimacy, and the lack of it. At the same time, the work is pointing towards the universe, the totality of a grand and abstract image; the idea of us.

In the same cell Kristian Skylstad showed an animation film of a kid running from the government, hunted through a dark and dystopian landscape, like a minimalistic nightmare. The movie is dealing with the isolation of the individual in a virtual reality which in lesser and lesser degree relates to neither society nor the individual human being, ending up increasing the quarantine of the sovereign human and disenfranchising us into to destructive addiction.

All photos: Kristian Skylstad