By Christine Novotny
I flew into Trondheim on a characteristically foggy and cool day. The mountains surrounding Norway’s third largest city tend to welcome these precipitous systems that give the area a pensive mood. I traveled to Trondheim to see the tapestries of Hannah Ryggen, a weaver who combined folk tradition and more contemporary narrative techniques to create politically charged, humanist tapestries. The Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum was hosting the third Hannah Ryggen Triennial, which boasts a variety of art shows all over the city. Each show contains some of Ryggen’s work with a grouping of contemporary artists who are making work in a similar vein, showing that the themes and concepts of Ryggen’s work are universal and still relevant today.
The 2022 triennial’s theme is “Anti-Monument,” an idea in contemporary art that challenges all aspects of traditional memorials and seeks to deny the presence of a one-sided authoritarian force in public spaces. Hannah’s work is anti-monument in many ways. Ryggen tells the stories of the people, not the authoritarian power. She disempowers dangerous dictators by embarrassing them, or rewriting history all together. In 6. Oktober 1942 (6 October 1942), she weaves a cartoonish Adolf Hitler flying through the air, propelled by his own flatulence. In Ethiopia, she rewrites history by depicting Benito Mussolini with a spear through his head. She weaves the truth as she sees it, from a perspective of universal compassion and a strong anti-fascist disposition.
I spent 5 days in Trondheim, and seeing each show was the only thing I had planned. I went to some shows multiple times, but I spent the most time with “Anti-Monument I” in the Trondheim Kunstmuseum’s Gråmølna. This show contains the largest number of Ryggen’s original tapestries, interspersed with powerful contemporary pieces.
The show’s first room centered around Hannah Ryggen’s meaningful tapestry Vi lever på en stjerne (We Are Living on a Star), Ryggen’s love letter to this world, an expression of compassion and faith in humanity. This tapestry was hanging in the Norwegian government center during the 2011 terrorist attack and was permanently altered when the car bomb detonated next to the building. The tapestry took all kinds of abuse, including being hit with debris, and soaked in water during the clearing of the building. The most visible damage was the bottom right corner, where the tapestry was split. During restoration, the decision was made to leave the repair visible, and retain this part of the story in the piece.
Ryggen, Hannah. “We are Living on a Star.” Photo: Christine Novotny
Everyone who talked to me about the tapestry’s damage referred to it as a “laceration” or a “wound.” Its visible repair was called a “scar.” The descriptions were so bodily, suggesting the piece was not just a tapestry, but an artwork that was very much alive, and now held a new, denser meaning within it.
Ryggen, Hannah. “We are Living on a Star.” (Detail with visible repairs) Photo: Christine Novotny
In the same room was a stunning installation from Norwegian artist Marthe Minde, entitled Mellom loft og kjellar (Between Attic and Stairs). The sculpture has two oval shaped mirrors with a cascading staircase of branches woven into handspun wool from Minde’s region. The mirrored shapes on the top and bottom of the sculpture are the exact dimensions of the shape that is centered in We Are Living on a Star. Within the shape, there is a passage that the visitor is invited to enter. I saw myself reflected in the mirrors both below and above, surrounded by a thousand delicate handspun threads. The dialogue between Minde and Ryggen seems to suggest that we are still a part of the story being written; we are living within the same kinds of events that drove Hannah to weave these stories. It is a poetic reminder of our participation in this broken and repairing world.
Minde, Marthe. “Between Attic and Stairs.” Photo: Christine Novotny
Other works included The Prodigal Son, a tapestry commissioned by a church to depict the biblical parable. In the story, a father has two sons, and the younger son asks for his portion of the inheritance, only to squander it away and eventually become destitute. He comes back to his father, expecting scorn. Instead, his father welcomes him back with love and a great party. It is a beautiful story of redemption.
At some point after Hannah had woven the top half depicting the story, the church withdrew the commission. Ryggen added a panel onto the bottom of the narrative–wide bands of blue and yellow with meandering footstep shapes in knotted rya, presumably the prodigal son wandering in his journey away from home.
Hannah Ryggen, “Prodigal Son.” Photo: Christine Novotny
The show’s curator, Solveig Lonmo, told me that this tapestry had been more or less forgotten in a lecture hall of the local university, and the museum decided to display it for the show. The day they unrolled the piece at the installation was the day that Putin invaded Ukraine. The blue and yellow portion seemed to speak to the present, and the wandering footsteps to a war-torn nation of people displaced from their homes. It’s another example of Ryggen’s prescient work, and how she continues speaking to us today.
Also included in the show was a 45-minute video about “Memory Wound,” the proposed memorial for the 69 victims who were murdered in the 2011 terrorist attack on Utoya island. The story of the memorial was told by its creator, Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg, whose winning design would have cut a channel into the rocky point that looks out onto Utoya. Visitors would be led down a winding path through the forest, and eventually would be led below the surface of the point. Across the channel, they would be met with the names of the victims etched on the stone opposite them. This would provide a quiet place to mourn and turn the gaze inward.
Dahlberg, Jonas. “Memory Wound (from a video of the proposed memorial)” Photo: Christine Novotny
While the proposal won global acclaim, the memorial was never realized after 20-30 residents in the Utoya region protested its violent nature. In the memorial, Jonas asks which is more violent, the act or the work? How can a country heal when it cannot face the truth? Even though the memorial was never built, the many years of discussion within Norway and the art world, and the circulating design photo of the proposed piece makes it feel like “Memory Wound” exists even though it was never physically built. It seemed incredibly relevant to the United States, where we are reckoning with accepting the often sordid truth of our own country’s making and the present-day violence that is born from our inability to repair that harm.
The Hannah Ryggen Triennial was full of artwork that challenges our perception of truth, that asks us to explore the humanity behind history, and the stories of those who have been lost. Hannah Ryggen’s work is so powerful because it still effortlessly participates in discourse with the global community, using events that were present to Ryggen, and history that we continue to reckon with.
Christine Ann Novotny is a Minnesota-based handweaver, educator, and designer who runs the textile studio CAN Goods. She seeks to bring a vibrant, colorful energy to handweaving that invites people to reconsider the textiles in their life, and to evolve the practice of handweaving through contemporary handwoven goods and craft education.
Read more about Christine’s impression of the Triennial, with additional photos, in the North House Folk School blog post, “Hannah Ryggen Triennial in Trondheim.”
August 2022
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