CHRISTIANE SHREIBER OUTSIDE THE FRAME

Production year: 2014

Format: installation, performance

Exhibited at Stavanger Art Museum, Norway.

Sidsel Christensen transforms the room of the Hertervik collection at Stavanger Art Museum, into an artwork that resurrects the story of painter Christiane Schreiber (1822 – 1989). Shreiber originates from Stavanger, and is one of four women from this period, that the museum holds in its collection. Christensen has veiled Hertervigs paintings, and erected a big, rusted scaffold structure – a new framing device - to tell another story.

The installation and performance acts as a time machine. It presents a network of various viewpoints where historical sources, letters and biographies, merge with fictional stories, created and by the artist: A hidden story of Shreibers life and work slowly appears.

The tale centers on the relationship Shreiber had to the Swedish painter Sofie Ribbing (1835 – 1894). The two women shared a space of rotating double gazes; continually looking back at each other, and out of this grew a new type of artwork that had a life of its own. This gaze also stretches into our current time, and looks back at the contemporary viewer.

Christensen lends her body and voice to these viewpoints, to create a more open space for Shreiber and Sofie to exist.