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contact: maren@marenjk.net

 

 

SHORT BIO

Maren Dagny Juell is an artist working with moving image, installation and VR/AR.

Maren was born in Oslo, Norway where she currently has a studio. She received her MA from Chelsea College of Art (London) in 2004. The last solo shows have been at Trondheim Center for Electronic Arts (2023), Tenthaus (2021), Atelier Nord Oslo (2019), Trafo Kunsthall (2018), Podium Oslo (2017) and Trøndelag Senter for Samtidskunst (2018).

Work has been included in group shows at Bergen Center for Electronic Arts (2021), Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art (2008) and Stavanger Kunstmuseum (2015) amongst others. Moving image works have been screened internationally like The Australian video Biennial in Melbourne( 2017 and 2019). She has participated in and made new works for various biennials including; Riga Photography Biennial (2020), Meta.Morf Trondheim international biennale for art and Technology (2022) and Art Encounters Biennial, Timisoara Romania (2023).

 

In addition to her art practice she lectures in the history of video art, teaches courses on fine art practice and tutors students at Einar Granum Kunstfagskole, Oslo. She also co-ran the artist-run gallery She Will Artspace 2018-2022.

 

 

SHORT STATEMENT

 

II work with moving image, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), sculpture and installation. With absurdity and humour, the works deal with new technology and language with a focus on human adaptability and agency. I construct scenarios and narratives borrowed from sci-fi literature, computer games, and online informational videos.

 

The scripts are based on resources like instructional videos and management training tools, sales pitches and tutorials on stress management. Collaging and adapting elements from these and other sources, the work gives birth to a ‘subject’ who speaks with a double tongue, veering between the human and the digitally generated, and delivering a message that is simultaneously authoritative and incoherent, reassuring and vacuous.

 

While experimenting with technology I am interested in the borders of the virtual world and how we place ourselves in the structural domain in between. In VR and AR I investigate embodiment by inviting the viewer to experience how the sensory apparatus can be effective in a virtual and physical space at the same time. This is used as an analogy for how the body is incorporated into economic power structures through language that praises flexibility and progression by activating the instructions as part of the work.