Tori Wrånes b. 1978

One of Norway’s most celebrated artists, Tori Wrånes is known for her intricate installations and performances that combine sound, extravagant costuming, prosthetics, and large-scale sculpture, Wrånes’ practice involves fantastical interpretations of themes such as queer identity, Nordic folklore, and environmental change. Wrånes and her performers are often set in a fantasy world, exploring Nordic myths through dreamlike narratives. Her sculptures evoke the body without fully representing it, while her action-based abstract paintings are composed of the same silicon and pigment that forms the prosthetics of her costumes.

The vastness of her interests require her practice to take on multiple forms through video/performance, sculpture, painting, and architecture. As a synesthete—a person with a condition of combining senses such as sight and sound—Wrånes visualizes vocal patterns into a sculptural form. In turn, she also visualizes form in sound, sculpting with her voice. From this sense-based creative process, she has also developed her own unique method of communication coined as “troll language.” Using sound to convey primal emotions and truths, the artist bypasses the structural hierarchies of language and rational thought. For Wrånes, the troll is a metaphor for the id and human fate alike; it represents our hidden truths. The result is a wide ranging, experimental, and ritualistic practice that freely draws on ancient stories and contemporary struggles to speak to the human experience of past and present.

Tori Wrånes (b. 1978 in Kristiansand, Norway; Lives and works in Oslo, Norway) recent solo shows include Mussel Tears at Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, CA; Handmade Acoustics at Ujazdowski Castle for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, Poland; Hot Pocket at Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo; Ældgammel Baby / Ancient Baby, Kunsthal Charlottenborg Denmark; Flute Warriors, with Red Comunitaria Trans, Kuirbog Festival, Bogotá, Colombia; and Drastic Pants, Carl Freedman Gallery London. Select performances include Stone and Singer commissioned by the 19th Biennale of Sydney; Yes Nix, commissioned by Performa 13, New York; Colombo Art Biennale, Sri Lanka; Dhaka Art Seminars, Bangladesh; CCA Lagos, Nigeria; The Eccentrics, Sculpture Center, New York; Naam Yai, commissioned for the Thailand Biennale in Krabi; and Garden of Lefthand commissioned by the Lilith Performance Studio in Malmo, Sweden.

The artist is in the permanent collections of the Nasjonalgalleriet (The National Museum of Art, Design and Architecture), Oslo, Norway; Gothenburg Art Museum, Gothenburg, Sweden; Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norway; Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Lillehammer, Norway; Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand, Norway; Preus Museum, Horten, Norway; and the Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway. Her work is also permanently installed at the Ekebergparken Sculpture Park, Oslo, Norway and the REV Ocean Collection, Port of Norway. 

Wrånes’s work will be included in the upcoming Venice Biennale in 2026.