Kode Bergen Art Museum in Norway will present They Live the most comprehensive presentation of artist Vibeke Tandberg to date, spanning more than three decades of her artistic practice, from well-known pieces to new works.
Vibeke Tandberg (b. 1967) is among the leading representatives of postmodern conceptual photography. “They Live” marks a homecoming for the artist, who studied photography at the Art Academy in Bergen in the early 1990s. As a central part of the Nordic wave of young artists emerging in the 1990s, Tandberg is particularly known for her groundbreaking staged photography and is regarded as a pioneer of digital photography as an art form.
The exhibition will present highlights from three decades of Tandberg’s practice alongside new works on display for the first time. “They Live” will combine the theatricality of her oeuvre with a stagecraft of its own: works in multiple media – photography, film and video, sculpture and objects, text pieces and ephemera will be presented throughout Kode’s Stenersen building, including Tandberg’s sculptural installation Hestebarrikaden (2023) in front of the main entrance, creating a dramatic space for Tandberg’s identity-bending and cascading personae.
Kode will highlight the breadth of Tandberg’s practice, which has left a profound mark on Norwegian and international art history, while also demonstrating how her work retains its relevance for new generations in reflections on media use, gender, identity and power.
Vibeke Tandberg (b. 1967) lives and works in Oslo. Her artistic practice encompasses a multitude of disciplines, including photography, painting, sculpture, film, and literature. While her early production takes the vantage point of staged and manipulated self-portraits, her practice has been increasingly directed toward a restless testing of opportunities within the arts. By using a wider variety of media and techniques, her work can be described as an investigation of how the world shapes itself and how to shape the world. Ideas and works are deconstructed and reconstructed. Creating becomes violence, alteration, conversion, and dissolution. Tandberg emphasises that the subject is an unstable point of venture, meaning is shifted all the time, and artistic freedom is without expectations.
Vibeke Tandberg : They Live
May 22 – September 12, 2026
Kode Bergen Art Museum
Rasmus Meyers Alle 9
Bergen 5015 Norway
https://www.kodebergen.no/en
