3rd European textile and Fibre Art Festival - Catalogue

MARIT HELEN AKSLEN
Norway / Norvé©ija
Born 1971
Klingenbergsv. 1
7043 Trondheim, Norway
Education
1998–2000 Postgraduate studies,
National College of Art and
Design, Bergen, Norway
1993–1996 Art studies, National
College of Art and Design,
Bergen, Norway
1992–1993 Art studies, Risør
Kunstskole, Norway
Selected exhibitions
2006 Solo exhibition at
Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo,
Norway
Kunstnersenteret Møre og
Romsdal
Textile Expressions in
Contemporary Art,
Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria
2005 “Stoff”, Slikeborg, Denmark
“Hands of Norway”,
Stockholm, Sweden
2003 The National Annual Fall
exhibition, Oslo, Norway
Works in collections
Norwegian Council of Culture
Museum of Applied Art, Bergen, Norway
North-Trøndelag Fylkesgallery,
Haugesund Billedgallery,
Trondheim District , Norway
St Olavs Hospital in Trondheim,
Norway
I have been concentrating on clothes and find
exploring the language of clothes exciting.
I use ready-mades in my work, like shirts and
braces. Most of the time I use fragments of
shirts, like cuffs, collars and pockets. I have
been trying to give the fragments a new
shape and a new function by building them
up, using their construction, in a different
way. This is how I am putting them into a
new context.
I also often decode the use of white shirts in
the world of politics and corporate business.
In this work “Money Short Cuts” I have been
concentrating on a serious global problem,
corruption.
More specific it is about
Money Laundering / White-wash.
First you see the black cuffs that become
whiter and whiter on its way to the top.
When you go closer you can see the world
map in embroidery on the whole tapestry.
The countries are embroidered in black but
some of the countries are embroidered in
red. Those are the countries and the places
where it is possible and easy to wash your
money white.
16