Congratulations to Tori Wrånes on her recent museum acquisitions
Sørlandets Kunstmuseum
The National Museum Norway
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.
Sørlandets Kunstmuseum
TORI WRÅNES, FLUTE WARRIORS: PERFORMANCE IN COLLABORATION WITH RED COMUNITARIA TRANS, KUIRBOG FESTIVAL, BOGOTÀ, COLOMBIA. PHOTO: SEBASTIÁN CONTRERAS.
IN COLLABORATION WITH RED COMUNITARIA, A COLUMBIA BASED TRANSGENDER ACTIVIST AND COMMUNITY GROUP.
ACQUIRED BY SØRLANDETS KUNSTMUSEUM
The National Museum
TORI WRÅNES, THE SINGER, 2015. SILICON, MICROPHONE, TEXSTYLE, HAIR AND ACRYLIC.
SCULPTURE IS BASED ON THE PERFORMANCE STONE AND SINGER FOR THE 19TH BIENNALE OF SYDNEY 2014
PHOTO: ANNAR BJØRGLI / THE NATIONAL MUSEUM.
ACQUIRED BY THE NATIONAL MUSEUM
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