09/07/20
NA Meets: Ane Graff, artist
Ane Graff’s artistic practice is informed by feminist new materialism, with a focus on the human body as a system, health, and chronic illness.
Born in Bodø in northern Norway, Graff now lives and works in Oslo. As well as making art, and being mother to a young child, Graff is a research fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo, where she works in close collaboration with the Department of Biosciences at the University of Oslo, lecturing on microbiology.
In 2019, Graff represented Norway at the 58th Venice Biennale. Her work, States of Inflammation, consisted of three large-scale glass cabinets with smaller sculptures of plants and coral inside. It explored how all material bodies are affected by what they encounter, and, for humans, in particular, how pollution is causing the loss of bacteria that live on, and with, us. Accordingly, our bodies are changing into something new and unknown.
Next year Graff will be exhibiting in the Liverpool Biennial (postponed from 2020 due to Covid-19). Norwegian Arts spoke to Graff about her varied research interests, her background and training, and life during lockdown.
Read my full interview for Norwegian Arts here