After my last exhibition Tropisk Kanal ( Tropical Channel) this summer in Norway, I am back in Rio de Janeiro, and my number one priority is to create a certain order in my apperance online. I latest today talked with a new friend here in Rio, Harvey, telling me that Facebook is kind of outdated. He is not the first telling me this. Instagram I just stopped using, my last update is this image from the preparations here in Rio before departure to Norway and Tropisk Kanal. I have used Facebook as a place to challenge my anxiety for exposure that became an obstacle in my life that froze in to a phobia which I been dealing with as an adult. The obvious reason for my stress regarding exposure is the massive exposure I had as a very young woman in Norwegian media in the trials between me and The Norwegian Football Association. The massive media attention was very traumatizing , and this trauma has impacted my personal life since then. In January 2023 I got help here in Brazil. My phobias had become so severe that I lost total ability to run my business, and it cost me terrible losses in the middle of success, happiness, and realization of long term dreams with my studio and gallery in Oslo, that was established as an art studio that could be running with me living in Brazil, but with planned exhibitions in Oslo, and annual visits for the Norwegian summer which I love with all my heart. I love the seasons in Norway, the winter, autumn, spring and summer- and the beauty outside my fantastic studio on the river banks was truly seeing everything I worked for as an entrepreneur coming in to place. It was just one detail I underestimated. My secret. My hidden compulsive thoughts, my hidden avoidance strategies, and my hidden phobia, always increasing with success, always increasing with exposure, and my exhibition The Clean Up in Oslo 2022 exposed parts my own reality before they where named out loud from me. So then, bang!! A silent bang not possible for anyone to see, but which now is possible for me to tell. Anyway! Here I am the autumn of 2023, and currently I am working on my upcoming exhibition, my website, a retrospective catalogue of my art, and this catalogue and manuscript I am writing about my 28 years with OCD and how this disorder has impacted everything in my life, but the art! The art is my investigation of everything, but my personal challenges. This, which somehow is a certain paradox, it is for me a huge liberation that constantly keeps me in a humoristic mood, full of joy and exploration energy for life! So what is happening now in the making of my online world, is that my voice gets it space, and I feel confident that my voice counts, that I have something valuable to tell, and finally, with my phobias of public visibility more and more under control- I can start telling the stories, and make the paintings that through my work have worked to visualize.
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