Through some random, or maybe fated, twists in the road, I was invited to perform at Nordnorsk Kunstkaskade this year.
The festival took place 12-14th June 2026 in Stonglandseidet, Norway. Every year in mid-June, the festival moves to a different location on the island of Senja, where it takes place alongside the 20 year old music festival Kråkeslottfestivalen.
📸 : Øyvind Aronsen
Kunstkaskaden is a multi-disciplinary visual arts festival with a twist. For the duration of the festival, artists get the chance to work on a piece of art with the audience as witnesses and parts of the process. The pieces that were created then get shown in the final gallery “It is what it is”.
During this gallery, I was invited to create a performance piece that could run alongside the exhibition. This was in fact my first ever solo, entirely made by me performance.
I spent a few months before the festival on creating my piece “The White Room”. It was a process with many ups and downs, many doubts and questions. In the end it all fell into place within two weeks or so. I created an improvisation based dance-ish performance, wrote and recorded the entire somg from scratch, I created a painting during my performance. I even ended up building the stage and frame for my canvas myself.
📸 : Øyvind Aronsen
The entire creation and performance process was incredibly rewarding. I learned so much, met so many amazing people and the feedback was overwhelming. This year I will also be performing at another gallery opening for one of the artists in the end of August.
I am so honoured and grateful to have gotten the chance to become a part of Kunstkaskaden. The atmosphere was amazing. It was alive with so much creativity, openness, community feeling.
I truly believe this festival has a great future of bringing together local and international artists in the far North, as well as giving emerging artists a safe space to explore what they can do.
I look forward to seeing what we can do next year!
For more information about the festival:
Applications as an artist or a volunteer for 2027 are already open!
📸 : Mona-Lisa Gullhav