GRASS Fellow, 2025
Ina Hagen, Fire Nation (2021), Installation view, Bergen Kunsthall, The Ocean, 2021. Image courtesy of Bergen Kunsthall and the artist.
Ina Hagen
This autumn's GRASS Fellow, Ina Hagen, will spend three months in Visby from August to November. During her time on Gotland, the artist will develop new works based on research and archive material collected over the past few years, with themes such as Norwegian energy infrastructure and its colonial heritage. During her stay, Hagen hopes to bring new perspectives and local history from the island to this material in dialogue with researchers and students at Campus Gotland.
The artist’s research includes a study of prehistoric plant fern samples taken from the Congo Basin and Mozambique between 1920-1958, a mission carried out in collaboration between the Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium and the expert botanist, Ove Arbo Høeg, employed at the University of Oslo. The study was eventually published in 1960, the same year as the Democratic Republic of Congo gained its independence from Belgium. The ferns themselves, called Glossoptoris, are commonly extracted as coal: the combustible that fueled the industrial revolution and the forceful and rapid escalation of colonial extraction and violence that came with it.
GRASS Fellow programme
Using slow travel from all corners of the Nordic-Baltic region, the GRASS Fellow programme invites artists with a particular focus on sustainability issues to Campus Gotland. The aim of the residency programme is twofold: for the artists to deepen their practice in dialogue with researchers and students, and to enrich the campus environment with artistic experiments, field trips, workshops and artistic interventions that contribute to increased curiosity, awareness and knowledge about sustainability issues. To immerse the artists in the academic environment, a workspace is provided on Campus Gotland in Visby for the duration of the residency. The programme also provides resources for visiting artists to organise public events on campus.
(born 1989) is an artist and writer living and working in Oslo, Norway. In her
artistic practice, that spans video and digital media, text and printed matter, collective
making practices and pedagogical forms, Hagen constructs platforms and performative
situations for critical reflection. In recent years, a key theme has been the ways in which
Norwegian energy colonialism is legitimized and normalized through industry self-
presentation in the media, and its consequences on individual, societal, and planetary
levels. More broadly, Hagen aims to critically interrogate hegemonic narratives, with an
interest in the artistic process as a form of civic participation.