The Monster as Stand-In

The idea that Northern Norway and Sápmi is a land of monsters has existed for centuries. From a European perspective, the nature and people of the northern regions have been perceived as extreme, savage, and uncivilized. Here in the North, the idea that this region represents the end of the world or even the gates to hell, has given way to very real fears that trolls, sea monsters and witches could be found in the forests and oceans, or even among the people of the villages.  

In the category of monsters, we find figures who shape-shift, live in the dark, and have supernatural abilities like the power to control the weather or communicate with wild animals and the devil. The creation of the monster through folklore, maps, religion, the judicial system, literature, film and art is a terrifying embodiment of deviance in society, against which the category of “the normative” is defined. The monster, according to the queer theorist, Jack Halbertsram, “condenses various racial and sexual threats to nation, capitalism, and the bourgeoisie in one body.” It becomes a substitute body, produced to reinforce all that society rejects, a body imbued with everything that has no place in society’s institutions: filth, disease, desire, transgression and vulgarity. This deviance has made the monster a subject of fascination for artists for centuries.  

The exhibition, The Monster as Stand-in takes monstrous representations in the collection of Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, and looks at these depictions of monsters in Northern Norway and Sápmi through a queer lens.  

Artists 

François-Auguste Biard, Viktor Bomstad and Magnus Skei Holmen, Chrix Dahl, Charles Eisen, Kaare Espolin Johnson, Brit Haldis Fuglevaag, Astrid Hestholm, Thorolf Holmboe, Bjarne Holst, Marin Håskjold, Per Krohg, Theodor Kittelsen, Karl Mydske Berger, John Andreas Savio