Ane Barstad Solvang
Pétroleuses
03/05/2025—21/06/2025
"Petroleuses", 2025
Egg tempera on canvas
120 x 170 cm
NOK 40 000
"My Life (Sideways) or Squinting)", 2025
Egg tempera on canvas
120 x 170 cm
NOK 40 000
Intallation view
"White Helleborus (A real Spring Treat)", 2025
Egg tempera on canvas
120 x 170 cm
NOK 40 000
"Cracle of flames" and "Sisters", 2025
Egg tempera on canvas
240 x 170 cm
NOK 80 000
Installation view
"Two Suns (For Extra Enlightenment)", 2025
Egg tempera on canvas
120 x 170 cm
NOK 40 000
"Burnout", 2025
Egg tempera on canvas
120 x 170 cm
NOK 40 000
In the exhibition titled
Pétroleuses, Ane Barstad Solvang presents paintings directly inspired by the Helleborus flower — described as an abortifacient and contraceptive in Hildegard von Bingen’s medieval texts on medicinal herbs. For possessing such medical knowledge — which at the time offered control over one’s body and destiny — women were burned at the stake as witches 200 years later. The beautiful, poisonous flower becomes a gateway to preserving knowledge of how freedom comes in waves.
Barstad Solvang is also strongly influenced by Silvia Federici’s book
Caliban and the Witch, which explores the link between economically unstable times and witch hunts as a form of female oppression during the Enlightenment. Federici emphasizes that women and homosexuals were burned because they did not produce children — i.e., new labor.
With historical resonance, the paintings are created using egg tempera and color pigments used in medieval art. With a background in book formats, Barstad Solvang often paints in series to create an animated poetry — a nod to repetition in time and morphology. The paintings are as large as human bodies, they take up space, and they serve as reminders of rights we take for granted — the legalized right to abortion, the diversity of love, and the right to bodily autonomy.
The works in the exhibition are Barstad Solvang’s attempt to distill an aesthetic of feminism: a visual thinking where the ornamental, and the corporeal take center stage. Here, shapes of hearts, stars, and genitals —symbols often dismissed as decorative and feminine — are made monumental.
Ane Barstad Solvang (b. 1991, Porsgrunn) works with visual art and literature. In 2024, she completed a Master of Fine Art at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and presented her graduation project
Solar plexusat BO, Visual Artists in Oslo. Barstad Solvang was awarded the Norwegian Government Grant for Young and Newly Established Artists in 2022. Previous exhibitions include the Graduation Exhibition (
Kunstnernes Hus, 2024),
If I Was A Tree(Leipzig Kunstverein, 2022), and
Deep in the Forest Behind Mount Doom(Studio17, 2022). In 2022, Solvang published her third book,
Sporty ponni, with the German art book publisher Colorama Print.
