The exhibition Virvel (Vortex) by the artist Morten Torgersrud is a collaboration between Lofoten International Art Festival (LIAF), the exhibition space NOUA and the Borderland Museum.

The exhibition consists of a series of photographs from Morten Torgersruds immediate surroundings in Kirkenes alongside a selection of photographs by Ellisif Wessel from the period 1890–1920. The documentation of infrastructure and industry interleaves with photographs from the artist’s family album. The material is presented side-by-side with the artist’s own photographic works, and the juxtaposition sparks an interaction between the images that brings them into play. The abundance of images creates new, spontaneous and apparently random connections that transcend traditional division and classification.

As a self-taught photographer, the revolutionary communist socialite woman Ellisif Wessel documented the multicultural life on the border with Russia, in the midst of the progress of industrialization. When Morten Torgersrud places Wessel’s landscape photography side-by-side with found images and his own photographs, it’s as if the fluid transitions between family album, archival materials and the viewfinders of the two photographers create a new, overriding subject. Wessel’s photographs of waterfalls, rivers, trees, ice caps, coastlines and mountain ranges were taken in an era where industrialization gained serious momentum and defined a border area characterized by continuous negotiation and displacement.

The exhibition is part of Lofoten International Art Festival 2024 and forms a run-up to the festival opening in Svolvær on September 20, 2024.

Lofoten International Art Festival – LIAF – is Scandinavia’s longest-standing art biennale and presents works by local and international artists in a place-conscious context. This year’s festival, the 18th of its kind, is curated by Kjersti Solbakken. LIAF aims to be an open, experimental and accessible meeting-ground for artists, contributors, collaborators and spectators. LIAF has no permanent arena, but is staged in a different part of Lofoten each time. Since 2009, the festival has been run by Nordnorsk kunstnersenter. LIAF has its own artistic council.

The exhibition is supported by Arts and Culture Norway, regional project funds from Kunstsentrene i Norge, BKH and Bodø2024.