BEATRIZ GONZÁLEZ EXHIBITS IN NORWAY - “ACTIONS FOR ART AND SOLIDARITY”

Beatriz González (Bucaramanga, Colombia, 1932) is considered one of the most influential artists in Colombia. She has also been a researcher, curator and teacher; a keen observer of her surroundings, which she represents with her own style. Her works, mostly paintings, but also engravings, drawings and installations, have as their protagonist "Lo colombiano" (what is Colombian), with all the complexities and contradictions that this term can include. The artist has pointed out the aftertaste of the political class, the diverse nature of popular culture and, with a deep empathy for the victims, the atrocities of the armed conflict.

In total, Actions of Art and Solidarity presents 76 works by artists, activists, collectives and thinkers from around the world, including Norway, encouraging cultural, socio-political and environmental solidarity across different geographies and contexts from the 1950s to the present day.

Looking back in time and forward into the future, the exhibition displays artists’ extraordinary ability to narrate and build empathy around fundamental global conflicts and injustices, and provide the radical imaginaries of care and solidarity that can stimulate their resolution.

The venue, Kunstnernes Hus (The Artists’ House, Oslo) has a symbolic value, since the institution has played a recurrent part in Norway’s own contribution to artistic solidarities – from presenting Pablo Picasso’s Guernica in 1938 during its international solidarity tour, to organising exhibitions of solidarity with other parts of the world. The exhibition also presents central instances of Norwegian solidarity artistic practices, as well as new works especially commissioned for the exhibition.

OCA is a hybrid arts foundation focusing on two areas: curating (exhibitions, research trips, publications and discursive programmes), as well as funding and support (providing grants, research trips and residency schemes) to foster a two-way exchange with the international arts scene. Under the direction of Katya García-Antón, OCA has launched a deep engagement around urgent issues within the arts, such as the environment and social justice. OCA’s programme works to forge creative alliances that dismantle colonial and canonical pasts and presents, including those within its own institutional structures, in order to imagine new forms of being and doing for the future.