Merete Røstad
Acts of repair

With the artwork Acts of Repair, the artist Merete Røstad wants to open for a deeper dialogue with landscape. By re-activating nature’s healing powers, the work encourages the audience to reflect and be aware of nature’s ability to self-heal after human intervention and traumatic events. In Acts of Repair 12 copper needles form a sculpture, together. Scattered around the landscape surrounding Galleri F 15, Acts of Repair performs landscape acupuncture on carefully selected points. The points are methodically selected based on conversations with locals, archive material and walks in the area, before each individual needle is placed in a spot selected by a dowsing stick.

The work can be experienced by following a map which can be found in the reception or digitally downloaded through the QR-code placed on a small sign each of the needles.

Merete Røstad (1975) is an interdisciplinary artist and educator with a practice rooted in research of collective memory, memory work and archives. Røstad uses participatory processes, installation and sculpture as a method in working with the public in the public sphere. Røstad has a doctorate in artistic research with the project The Participatory Monument – Remembrance and Forgetting as Art Practice in Public Sphere (2018) at the Oslo Academy of the Arts (KHiO) and a master’s in Art in Public Space and new artistic strategies from Bauhaus University. She works as an associate professor at the master’s Program in Art and Public Spaces and is the research leader at the Department of Arts and Crafts at KHiO. Røstad leads two international interdisciplinary research projects: MEMORYWORK and ARcTic South. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally in public spaces, at festivals, galleries, and museums. Røstad lives and works in Oslo and Berlin.

www.mereterøstad.studio