Art In/Between Spaces

So, when I’m not doing whatever it is I’m doing when I’m working on my own stuff, I work with producing other artists, projects and events related to street art. The term “street art” however, is being used right left and center, and means different things depending on who you ask.

We (Street Art Oslo and our amazing photographer Nima Taheri) made a short movie in 2023 to try and make clearer what our approach to this field is, and my colleague James Finucane wrote this about it:

“For the past year, Street Art Oslo has been working with the theme 'kunst i mellomrom' or 'art in/between spaces', which is a term we have adopted to highlight several unique aspects of the art and culture field in which we work.

‘Kunst i mellomrom’ in this context refers both to a literal space in the city and the gap between the established cultural industry and those outside. We also find it helpful in describing our approach to producing art in public space: particularly how it intersects and overlaps with conventional and contested definitions of street art, graffiti and public art.”

(The video has subtitles in both Norwegian and English)

The term was birthed by coincidence, as these things often are, after I had a conversation with artist Øivin Horvei during his exhibition “Bag”, that we produced in our microgallery/office space in 2021. I was telling Øivin about how I struggled to explain to people what this space is, and what my work actually is, and he just replied something that is hard to fully translate from Norwegian to English: det er et mellomrom (it’s an in-between space). I told my colleague about this conversation, and from that moment on we started to play around with the term.

We’re still trying to figure out exactly what it means, but I think that is also what makes it so interesting for us to work with.

This week we began the physical production of our main project, Oslo Street Art Festival, and we will be working for the next three months producing local and international artists. We’re also producing several exhibitions in this period, as well as hosting workshops and making collective artworks in different neighbourhoods around town. If you are interested in coming to any of our events, you can have a look at our website to find the program, and also more about our work here:

https://oslostreetartfestival.no

Hope to see you on the streets or at our events the next few months:)