Kristina Bræin: Survival Strategies

Kristina Bræin (1955 – 2022) created a distinctive body of work in which form and colour intervene in everyday life.

Kristina Bræin's installations take compositional cues from abstract painting into space to put them in dialogue with architecture. An observation made in the room often becomes a keynote that the artist lets play out in the installation through improvisational responses. In tableaux that are precisely composed from everyday materials, the works invite the viewer to be present in the moment.

Kristina Bræin developed her art through sharp observations of the exhibition space, a pronounced musicality in tone and colour tone, and not least humour and a sense of absurd juxtapositions. Playing with details in the architecture and interior, such as electrical sockets and mouldings, and often placed in the corners of the exhibition space, the installations give the impression of being created for the just the rooms in which they are shown.

Installation art is intermedial in nature. When the art moves out into the exhibition space, it is often one of the traditional art forms that serves as a springboard. Kristina Bræin developed her work in dialogue with painting, and many of her installations are spatial compositions of form and colour. In 2014, Bræin started work on the extensive series Weaver's Daughter, where she approached textile art using wool yarn and thread, often mounted on cardboard. 

After Bræin's death in 2022, a large part of her production has been incorporated into the collections of Norwegian museums. This helps to secure the works for posterity, but how can installations based on the artist's observations in an exhibition space be restaged, without the artist herself being present?

The exhibition Kristina Bræin: Survival Strategies is based on works in the collections of Kunstsilo, Kode and Haugar Art Museum, and the exhibition is documented in a catalogue that emphasizes the installing and preserving of installation art.

Kristina Bræin bequeathed her remaining production to her friends and colleagues Kari Steihaug and Bente Louise Aas, who identified and catalogued the works left in the artist's studio. Through donations to museums, they have ensured that a large part of this distinctive oeuvre is preserved for posterity.

About the artist

Kristina Bræin (1955 - 2022) was educated in musicology and art history at the University of Oslo, at the Oslo School of Architecture and the Institute for Colour at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. She had solo exhibitions at Kunstnerforbundet, Kunstverein Schwerin, Tanja Pol Galerie in Munich, 1646 in The Hague, the Stenersen Museum, Oslo Kunstforening, Kunstnernes Hus and UKS, among others. Bræin participated in Manifesta 7 in Bolzano and was Norway's representative in the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2003.

After Bræin's death in 2022, a significant part of her work has been incorporated into the collections of Norwegian museums.

The exhibition is supported by the Anders Jahre Humanitarian Foundation.