Artists at Home: Margrethe Aanestad

Artists at Home: Margrethe Aanestad

Margrethe Aanestad is a Norwegian-born visual artist, based in both New York City and Stavanger, a small town on the West Coast of Norway. Aanestad works in drawing, paining and sculpture. She is exhibiting internationally, and has through several occasions over the past decade collaborated with Open Source Gallery both as exhibiting artist and co-curator/producer. She  is also a current member of the Artist Advisory Board. Aanestad was one of the founders of the non-profit artist-run space Prosjektrom Normanns in Stavanger (2011-2020), and this has been an important part of her time and artistic practice. Now the space is closed and Aanestad is focusing solely on her own artistic career.

 
 
 

Margrethe Aanestad, 2020, photo by Jan Inge Haga

WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON CURRENTLY?

At the moment I am working from a studio in Stavanger. After I went to Norway in late January, and the US travel ban started in March, I haven’t been able to return to NY again as planned this spring. May 1. I was supposed to start a three-month residency at Residency Unlimited in Brooklyn, but the residency is postponed due to the Covid-19, so I am trying to spend my time in a good way, creating work and energize from my studio here.

I am making several large scale drawings using chalk pastels. Parts of them are indefinite, hazy, ephemeral, and others more defined, but conceptually also moving and floating in a way. Drawing is a medium I have been working on always, so this is part of a continuing process. I am trying out new pastels and pigments. I am also continuing making more paintings in various types of ink, and just started experiencing with clay. As my earlier sculptural works always has been made of found objects, such as marble pieces and textile, this is a new experience that I am excited about. I have an artist book published and produced by Shine Portrait Studio Press / Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, coming up that I am currently developing. So basically I am just making as much as I can, exploring new things.

 

DESCRIBE YOUR PROCESS WHEN BEGINNING A NEW PROJECT

The ideas for new projects are quite intuitive, I never make sketches or write down ideas. I start with the materials, often having a somewhat clear, and sometimes vague, idea about the result. The process can change, and even lead me – all though the intention is consistent.

I am genuinely driven by working in parallell projects simultaneously, through different materials, textures, and contrasting expressions. They are depending on each other. I always look for a balance, a subtle crash; a dynamic between energies – both in my practice and processes, in what I need around me, in my studio – or in a show. In other words, I am developing and making my own universe, on the brink of existence. One can say I make what feels necessary. Which I guess also is clear in my work as total. If I do drawing too long, I miss sculpture and starts planning for that; if I am working in ink making organic, fluid, limitless improvised compositions, for example, I also need to work on meditative hatching of circles or other clear, calming forms, for a while. This has to do with the different focus and energy the actual making requires, the physical, mental and visual weight and presence, and what the works give and take, as pieces. Both kinds of creating and making are exhausting and giving in very different ways.

So, I guess I can claim that I am really addicted to going between opposites in materials, techniques, energy and feeling, this sums my practice, and work, up.

 

Margrethe Aanestad, 2020, photo by Jan Inge Haga

WHAT IS THE GREATEST CHALLENGE OF OUR TIME?

It´s almost impossible to not write a whole book here. Human made climate change, and how the past and contemporary ignorance of this, affects and impacts our time and the future generations. It is depressing to learn how power, money, denial and ignorance goes hand in hand. And I think the brutal contrasts between being born privileged and safe, or in complete hopelessness and suppression, is horrible. It seems impossible to believe that the world can become a better place when worlds leaders are dysfunctional, narcissistic and has dangerous strategies, and absurd behaviour. I am terrified by how mindsets like white supremacy has become so massive and find roots. The world is going in completely wrong direction. (PS: I cannot vote in USA yet, but I have hopes I will be able to soon!)

 

HAS COVID-19 IMPACTED YOUR PRACTICE?

The situation has not impacted or changed he core of my art work, or what I am exploring in my artistic practice in a notable way. Overall, my work revolves around existential, universal themes in all the complexities and variations. But I have to say, through this time it has become very important for me to insist on making art. Like a crucial part of my own existence, as a way to stay personally sane when it all is so unclear, draining and hopeless. Also on the behalf of the importance of art. I have been fortunate to be able to go to my studio, here in Norway. I am extremely thankful for that. I think I would loose my mind if I could not express myself and get totally lost in making work, in those times.

 

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