Norway (Nordic Pavilion)

Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) announced that Norway’s contribution to the 56th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia in 2015, will be developed by the artist Camille Norment.

The project, Rapture, which will take place in the Nordic Pavilion, will be inspired by states of dissonance – sonic, cultural and individual. The artist will explore the socio-political encoding of sound historically and in the present from a critical perspective as well as reflect upon dissonance as a space for the creation of new and affirmative thinking. As Norment comments: “Sound, like experience is fleeting, but it leaves traces in the mind and in the body. As such it is historical and a viable tool for anticipating what is to come”. The project is curated by OCA’s Director Katya García-Antón, with the collaboration of Antonio Cataldo, Senior Programmer at OCA. It is commissioned and organised by Office for Contemporary Art Norway.

Camille Norment‘s practice includes sound, installation, light sculptures, drawing, performance and video and draws from the artist’s experience in music, dance and the arts. Her research often crosses disciplines and is currently exploring the interconnections between sound, myth, taboo and science within the framework of art and history. Norment creates couplings of conceptual and formal inquiries in response to selected socio-cultural phenomena. Her work is largely concerned with creating experience through the relationship between the object/space and the body of the viewer, and with the way the body is inscribed with meaning through its negotiation with its surroundings. It seeks to engage the viewer as a physical and psychological participant in the work, and as such, is interested in creating experiences that are both somatic and cognitive.

While also highly concerned with aesthetic experience, Norment’s practice simultaneously spans the thresholds of the social and the political. Raising questions around race and gender, the artist excavates aspects of our history that have either been forgotten or repressed, as well as looks towards new forms of suppression that may be germinating in the near future.

Camille Norment (b.1970, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA lives and works in Oslo, Norway) works as an artist, musician, composer, and writer. She performs as a solo artist, with other musicians in selected projects, and with her ensemble, the Camille Norment Trio consisting of electric guitar, Norwegian hardingfele, and the rare glass armonica. She has exhibited and performed extensively in cultural events and institutions, including MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), New York, NY, USA (2013); The Kitchen, New York (2013), Transformer Station (The Cleveland Museum of Art), Cleveland, OH, USA (2013), The Museum of Contemporary Art (The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design), and many more.

Camille Norment Trio, composed of Vegar Vårdal (Norwegian hardanger fiddle), Håvard Skaset (electric guitar), and Camille Norment (Glass armonica), is a unique trio of voices who investigates the visceral qualities of resonance, noise, and overtone, creating music that enacts and deconstructs cultural and historical positions relevant to each of the instruments. Their performances are an organic movement between the composed and the improvised, creating a dynamic soundscape that defies a fixed genre reference. The Camille Norment Trio’s performance credits include The Kitchen, New York, USA; Cleveland Museum of Art; Ultima New Music Festival, Oslo; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo; and the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (HOK). Their first release, Toll, is available on Prisma Records. Reviews of their work have appeared in The Wire, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Aftenposten and KuNordische Musik.