Atomo

Visibility and invisibility in the works of Marianne Bjørnmyr  

In conversation with Francesca Marcaccio Hitzeman

Marianne Bjørnmyr is a Norwegian artist, living and working in Bodø, Norway. Marianne received her MA in Photography from London College of Communication. Marianne works with research based photography where central themes revolve around photography, authenticity, communication, documentation and evidence. Mainly through analog photography but also casts and objects have recently entered her production, with properties similar to photography through copying and replication. Instead of establishing a certainty, the works often represent a doubt and make us think differently about established facts. Through a phenomenological, index and performative approach, her work dwells on visibility and invisibility, behaviour and chance, science and phenomena. Marianne, in collaboration with Dan Mariner, runs NOUA in Bodø, Norway – an arena for photography as contemporary art.

Untitled (Hatsheput) (2021) from the series Epitaph Photograph, silver gelatin 

FRANCESCA MARCACCIO HITZEMAN:

What first caught your interest in photography?

Marianne Bjørnmyr:

As an artist, I am concerned with photography’s use as a reference to reality or as documentation, and at the same time photography’s weaknesses in storytelling. In my practice, I work with investigative art with areas of interest at the intersection of photography’s relationship with history, material culture, worldview, and science. My work attempts to address the structures and “flaws” that underpin the visual storytelling. In that way the starting point for my work has often been based on specific stories and events that are transformed through theoretical and technical research into exhibition formats through long-term projects.

FMH:

Could you begin by introducing your recent exhibition at Melk Gallery in Oslo?

Where does the title Epitaph come from?

MB:

The exhibition presents photographs depicting a selection of artefacts, together with exhibited objects cast in pigmented plaster. The photographed objects originate from various geographical areas and times in history with a time span of over 2,000 years. The objects have in common that the originals have not been preserved, they have been reconstructed for the exhibition, based on written or drawn descriptions from available archives. The objects have been cast in new forms, based on a historical vestige. The original artefacts are long gone; destroyed, stolen, or looted by power structures with a desire for cultural destruction – through colonisation, ethnic persecution, religious and ideological terrorism, and anthropology gone awry. The objects, cast in gypsum from silicone casts assembled from 3D rendered models, are not reconstructed as exact copies but as an imagined visualisation of something that was never visually documented. The exhibition thus does not produce a timeline of history – but displayed together, the objects generate new stories, connections and readings of the cultures they represent, while at the same time creating a bond between stories from the past and documentation of the present. In the images, there are references to stories far back in time through the Hatshepsut statues that were destroyed due to the desire for religious power, Aztec sculptures that disappeared after the Spanish colonization, objects from the Afghan National Museum that have been looted through war, elements from ruins of religious buildings in the Caucasus after a still ongoing conflict and ruins of cultural buildings in Iran that have been nearly destroyed by an American president in 2020. The title Epitaph reflets the project as a statement of something that no longer exists, like a commemorative image of a past that should be remembered.

Untitled (Agdam) (2021) from the series Epitaph Photograph, silver gelatin 

FMH:

Working across sculpture, installation, photography and text, your distinctive artworks expose the contradictions within dominant narratives about the world and also warns us of the ephemeral nature of peace.

MB:

My work stems from my interest in the role of visual documentation in conveying material culture. In my projects, I often go back to my education in social anthropology combined with photography. The focus is abstracted with a desire to create a contemporary rendering of connections between different cultures: in my last project ‘Epitaph’ through cultures that have in common that their cultural heritage has been lost, or in an upcoming project where I examine different cultures’ variations of applied behavioral rules and themes around symbolic systems, rituals, objects and power.

Untitled (Afghan Museum) (2022) from the series Epitaph From the exhibition Epitaph at MELK galleri in Oslo, Norway, 2022. Gypsum cast

FMH:

Drawing connections between the past and present guides us towards rebirth and hope; on the other hand, something that is apparently visual, in this case, photography, comes into one’s field of view more directly and serves to stir our visual perception and emotions. What I value are the different images that viewers conceive through the overall relationship between text and image, sculpture and image, between what is seen and not seen, and the various dialogues that emerge as a result. Much of your work, while remaining photographic in essence, has moved towards installation and sculptural based, pushing the boundaries of the medium. Could you tell us more about this?

MB:

The photograph and the cast objects that I work with share references to each other in the way they copy and multiply. The physical objects are in an exhibition not having any cultural or economic value apart from their own position as a work of art. Through a conscious distancing from the original materials and craftsmanship, I use tools and machines to produce the objects – they are reduced to a technical object only for the exhibition, as an epitaph of lost memories. The objects, as casts, in a way have the same properties as photography in my latest project Epitaph in the way that there is an eternal repetition between copies and representations of something that once existed.

Untitled (Dharmarajika) (2021) from the series Epitaph From the exhibition Shape of Time, Buskerud kunstsenter, Drammen, Norway, 2021 Photographs, silver gelatin 

FMH:

Since its invention, photography is universally recognised as the quintessential tool in the production of proof. But in your work, Marianne, you use photography as a means to question the logic of certainty. To me truth in photography is a question, not an answer. Truth in photography is a perception. It’s a feeling. In many ways, it’s intangible.

MB:

Any concern with the truth-presentational relationship to photography rests on this view on reality the way we know it; through photography we recognise objects and places that we have witnessed in real life, with a great likeness, a descriptive testimony of the world as we acknowledge it to be. I suppose, if saying that the photograph exists to measure, classify, and report on the world, passing on proof of events, then, the photographic image is not just a recording of what is in front of the camera but also a validation of it. However, there is always a conflict between systems of knowledge and perspectives and the ultimately unknowable. If contemporary artists aim to convey this to the audience, they are also implying a concept of no single truths. Artists are often not employing their work to come to any conclusion about the photograph´s role as a conveyor of truth, they are as you mention, where scientists use rationality or objectivity to conclude, employing imagination, in the hope of evoking reality. By such, not aiming to suggest that the photograph has the characteristics of conveying the real or not, but suggesting opening for inquiries and provoking thought.

First Indicative Object (2019) from the series 31 Indicative Objects Photograph, silver gelatin 

FMH:

What are you working on/researching at the moment?

MB:

I am working on a new long-term project for a new photobook, investigating how we perceive, interpret and trust told history. The project evolves around photography and representation, drawing upon the ways we understand history and the means we use to represent it, showing examples displaying dilemmas of photography, historical accounts, behaviour, and chance. The completed work will display an archive of orchestrated photographs that illustrate events that never happened. In 1903, a map was drawn up, suggesting that Israel should be founded in Uganda. This one example makes us think about how different the world would have been if this decision had been made. The work connects events related to failed experiments, forced control, nuclear bombs, cosmic investigations, extinct animals, and misunderstood phenomena. The project will put a focus on how human agency is shaped by social, cultural, and political force showing the lived tales of history, power, and desire, and at the same time becoming aware of the peculiar ways in which history comes to repeat itself