BIG WATER

About the exhibition

In BIG WATER, the visitor is immersed in marine worlds where fur-clad creatures move to the rhythm of the ocean. When the moon and the earth circle each other the moon pulls the earth’s water towards it. During the time of year when the tide is most dynamic, life in the creatures’ cave changes dramatically. They gather to pay homage to the movements of the celestial bodies and play flutes to the rhythm of the ocean’s oscillation between high and low tide.

At Accelerator, BIG WATER is presented as a six-channel video installation, installed in a panoramic format that surrounds the viewer. Rotating in the centre is a large sculpture of multiple levels that function as stands and mirrors the motives of the film. Visitors, sound and image are in circular, constant movement, like time. 

In BIG WATER, the temporal transformations are intensified. The title is a translation of the Thai expression naam yai, which refers to the time of year when the sea level oscillates most intensely between ebb and flow. To the artist, the great movement and constant changes represent a plurality to embrace. The creatures follow the movement of the water, the climate of the seasons and the effects of natural forces. They move betweeen arctic and tropical seas, above and under the surface. The two global extremes figure as a reminder of the fantastic range of habitats and life forms that exist beyond the norms and conventions of human civilisation. 

According to the artist, BIG WATER’s creatures were born of the tears of the mountain. They have sought out parts of the world where they live away from contemporary humans’ consumption of nature and of each other. They are free from charter tourism, gender roles and body obsession. Wrånes opens a window to a parallel world where the relationship to the body is liberated from ingrained movement patterns. 

Throughout her artistic career and as part of a performative ontological investigation, Wrånes has created various types of corporeality to assume. Swimming in fur in tropical water, rolling instead of walking, changing one’s sense of sight and smell or group improvising with self-built instruments are different ways of approaching the world with perceptiveness, humour and intuition. They also provide an opportunity to investigate the world beyond the categories through which we code and read bodies. 

About Tori Wrånes

Tori Wrånes (b.1978, Kristiansand, Norway) works across a multitude of media where sound, time and motion are in the centre. 

Prior to studying art, Wrånes was a member of a rock band for eleven years. Her extensive experience as a vocalist makes itself felt in her practice as sound, song and music are important components in her spatial compositions.

Tori Wrånes’s works are often all-encompassing and dreamlike. She creates surrealistic worlds of hybrid forms and mutations where creatures perform strange rituals. In the activities that unfold, inclusive communities often appear in which everyone has their given place. With humour and warmth she distorts reality beyond cultural norms and standards. With influence from mythology, existentialism and LGBTQI activism, Wrånes’s characters move beyond the rational and challenge ideas about body, gender and contemporary lifestyles.

One of Norway’s most acclaimed artists, Tori Wrånes lives and works in Oslo. She has held solo exhibitions and has been commissioned to create works for art institutions and biennials throughout the world, including: Lilith Performance Studios, Malmö (2022); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2019); Thailand Biennale, Krabi (2018); Ujazdowski Castle for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2018); Museet for Samtidskunst, Oslo (2017); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2017); Sculpture Center, New York (2016); Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka (2015); Biennale of Sydney (2014); PERFORMA 13, New York (2013).

Credits

Tori Wrånes, Artist

Exhibition team Accelerator
Therese Kellner, Curator
Richard Julin, Artistic Director

Studio Tori Wrånes
Tone Kittelsen, Studio Manager

Most of the footage in BIG WATER was filmed during Wrånes’s collaboration with the ILIOS Festival for New Music in Harstad, Norway, 2019 and the Thailand Biennale, Krabi, Thailand 2018–2019.