Deadline for Abstracts: 28 February 2022
Deadline for full manuscript: 13 May 2022
Publication: December 2022
Exhibition Opening: 8 January 2023

In a groundbreaking endeavour to triangulate three important traditions of our collective cultural heritage, the Arkeologisk Museum of the University of Stavanger presents Eden and Everything After, a conceptual exhibition organised around notions of the loss of – and slim hope of reconnection with – the lost paradise. Mirroring the boldly experimental nature of Der Blaue Reiter Almanach, we seek submissions for a catalogue reflecting upon this theme. Short submissions aimed at a general, art-interested audience are welcomed from the perspectives of art history, archaeology, theology, zoology, ethology, and the environmental humanities.

The art of the early 20th Century in Europe was characterized by an intense interest in prehistoric cultures, and, not coincidentally, some of the first Paleolithic cave art had been discovered at the “moment of Modernism.” Powerful concordances between German Expressionist paintings and the art of earlier cultures provide justification for a formal comparison between bodies of work. Franz Marc’s premonition that human rapaciousness and violence augured an Apocalypse for animals, nature, and people was what compelled Modernism’s integrative personality to look to the past for a hopeful vision of a restored Eden.

Oslo-based artist Tanja Thorjussen also takes inspiration from animals, history, spirituality, and myth. Like Marc, Thorjussen imbues her oeuvre with a wish and a warning. Thorjussen’s embodied practice creates alternative outcomes of entwined pinnipeds, memento mori made of real bones, and goddesses commanding swarms of bees and schools of fish.

Reflecting back through time at Marc and Thorjussen is the collection of artefacts at the Arkeologisk Museum at The University of Stavanger on Norway’s southwest coast. These objects from a time that has passed into the mists are far from mute relics. They speak to us still, dazzling, shifting, and appearing anew.

Points of interest are not primarily individual images or objects, monolithic groups of works, mediums or genres, but rather the question of how various practices dealing with, or recast as dealing with, an idealised past or terrifying future have shaped our visual conceptions of Eden versus global warming and the sixth mass extinction. The geographical focus of the exhibition is on Northern Europe, but perspectives drawing international global comparisons are equally welcome.

Please send abstracts of 300 words or less to jean.m.carey@uis.no. The deadline for abstracts is 28 February 2022. Based on the abstract, authors will be invited to submit succinct manuscripts of 3-4 pages and a maximum of one figure, to be completed by 13 May 2022 for a publication date of December 2022. Eden and Everything After opens in January 2023.