EXTRACTIONS II

Porsgrunn Kunstforening, Norway (2024)
Exhibition by Linn Obrestad & Hilde Iren Dølheim

“In pursuit of economic gain, both nature and humanity are sacrificed”.

Through installations that intertwine natural materials, industrial elements, and visual symbolism, Extractions invites viewers into the complex narrative of both loss and resistance. Roots mounted in steel frames, copper flowers on wood, and fragments of forest ecosystems are transformed into symbols of connection and separation, resilience and vulnerability. Each work is meant as a layered conversation, where opposing ideas and emotions exist side by side, resisting the simplifications of language.

What happens to our collective values when what cannot be sold is deemed worthless? And what do we lose when a landscape is increasingly understood through what can be taken from it? In Extractions, we look at the consequences of a culture of extraction, not only from the earth, but from each other, from places, and from the futures we share.

Extractions II (2024) combined sculptural installations, video works, sound, and text-based pieces developed through fieldwork in forest landscapes in Telemark, where areas are currently being assessed for mineral extraction related to the Fen Complex.

The exhibition approached extraction as a layered condition, and natural materials collected from the forest areas were combined with industrial elements, magnets, metal structures, sound, and moving images, creating a space where vulnerability and force, growth and intervention, coexist.

The works traced connections between underground systems and visible infrastructures, human dependence on technology, and the quieter forms of erosion that follow when land is reframed as a resource.