Welcome to Imagined Memories, a duo-exhibition together with artist and printmaker Hammer Chen at Northing Space, Østre Skostredet 10, Bergen. The exhibition is part of LitFestBergen - Bergen International Literary Festival (5-9 February 2025) and is curated by Northing Space.
Vernissage: Saturday 8 February 17:00.
The vernissage is preceded by a presentation and panel discussion with curator Ben Wenhou Yu at Litteraturhuset Bergen (Olav H. Hauge) on Saturday 8 February 14:15.
The exhibition is open until 29 March 2025.
About the exhibition:
Both the Norwegian-Singaporean artist Cathrine Alice Liberg and the Chinese artist Chenxi Chen (aka Hammer) employ etching as their primary technique for crafting dreamlike graphic works.
Hammer seeks to reconstruct memories from collective experiences, capturing scenarios and moments that most of us have encountered in some form: a drowsy, long journey by train or bus, or a seemingly perpetual escalator rising in the middle of nowhere. Much like the way we process memories in our minds, photos and images are manipulated and abstracted on the metal plates.
Cathrine, who recently returned from an adventurous trip to Svalbard, where she attended a thirteen-week-long residency, brought back works imbued with the weight of Arctic exploration history. As she noted in her weekly blog reporting from the last depot of human civilisation: It was impossible to come to Svalbard and not be influenced in some way. The series of prints she produced there stands out remarkably from her ongoing exploration of her own diasporic family background.
Both artists were nominated for The Queen Sonja Print Award in 2022.