Lill-Anita Olsen, an artist working with textile, sculpture and ceramic, is connected to our research since she participated in the exhibition ‘Woman’s View of the Sea‘. This connection was intensified therafter. While she got inspired by our work, we got a different view on our research objects.
Lill-Anita: ‘My artistic practice has long been connected to the sea. My collaboration with the marine research environment at Nord University began through ‘Woman’s View of the Sea’. From this encounter, a possibility emerged to take my work one step further: What happens when the sea is no longer only something I explore and work with, but becomes a place where the material itself can work.’
She joined our cruise for the benthic time-series in 2025 and 2026 and helped processing the grab samples, bringing species from the deep seafloor of the fjords to light.
Lill-Anita: ‘Through the research environment, I was given the opportunity to join research cruises aboard the research vessel Tanteyen II and lower knitted textile structures into the sea. The works have been submerged to a depth of 375 metres, where they encounter conditions I can neither ‘recreate nor control in the studio – pressure, currents, seabed material and marine organisms. When the textiles return to the surface, they carry physical and biological traces of their encounter with the deep. These traces are neither planned nor constructed by me. They emerge through the material’s encounter with an environment beyond my control and become the starting point for new textile and spatial works.’
(Photo: Sofia Amieva Mau)
(Photo: Lill-Anita Olsen)
We hope to continue this collaboration with Lill-Anita to bring some creativity and inspiration in our sometimes rather dry scientific world…
Lill-Anita: ‘The collaboration with the researchers has also opened a space between artistic and scientific ways of investigating the ocean. For me, this is not about illustrating scientific knowledge, but about what can emerge when different perspectives, methods and questions are directed towards the same environment.‘
‘I cannot work in the deep sea. The material can.’
Lill-Anita Olsen: https://www.lillanitaolsen.net/