Siren Dahle receives the craft award for her work 'Concrete Life'
The work Concrete Life (Gladengveien 14) is previously exhibited in the exhibition 'Concrete reflections' QB Gallery 2023 and is now exhibited at Årsutstillingen at the National Museum in Oslo.
The contrast between the soft textile and the hard concrete frame evokes an unsettling feeling correlating to changes in urban environments. The unclear state of the building evokes the feeling of unease, it might be in the process of being built, but also deteriorating. The motif gave the jury immediate associations to tendencies seen in Oslo today, where buildings are being torn down without the thought of their architectural history (...) whilst part of the city's heritage disappears rapidly, it takes a long time to hand weave.
Siren Dahle (b. 1986, NO) uses photographic starting points of collapsed buildings. These images of ruins are woven, and a fine-meshed interaction emerges between construction and the destructive collapse associated with warfare and crisis. The architecture is grim, apparently destroyed. Dahle’s work paints a picture of a more existential decay – distorted thoughts and feelings of discouragement. She places herself at an intersection of contrasts: between imperfect beauty, an aesthetics of decay, and the possibility of building something up.
Dahle is acquired by the National Museum in Oslo.
