03/09/2025
Some retrospective photos of CISSI KLEIN videregående skole project in Trondheim, Norway. I created two drawings dedicated to Cissi Klein and her family. They are in different scales and this time using charcoal and graphite together.
The school is having an OPEN DAY on Thursday, September 4th for the public to see these two and other commissioned artworks for the school from 1600- 1800. Inauguration of the art projects with speeches in the «Kantinoteket» is at 1630. I will be there 😊
Several of the artists will be present at the event, and art consultants Anne-Gro Erikstad and Marie Nerland will lead short guided tours for the public.
Artists Jan Freuchen and Linn Pedersen, Ida Madsen Følling and Markus Li Stensrud, Kvae & Bark (Karoline Sætre and Øyvind Novak Jenssen), Trygve Ohren and Charlotte Rostad, Øystein Pålsønn Lønvik, Anders Sletvold Moe, Tuda Muda and Kiyoshi Yamamoto have all created new works of art for the school.
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about the drawings:
A year long process that was spent visualising and drawing everything I had absorbed about Cissi Klein, her family, the World War II museum, multiple current wars, the existence and absence of God, violence as a recurring theme, a world with less pain and more love, identifying peace in chaos, and developing a vocabulary of symbols that reflect courage, connection, creation, and the preservation of what is great as it is—something that does not need more to be appreciated.
In the drawing “Past or present,” an Indian scroll painting (pata-chitra) inspired rendition, a surrealist composition emerges that overlaps a timeline between Cissi from the past (her reality) and Cissi from the future (if she had survived). For those unfamiliar, dear Cissi Klein was a 13-year-old Norwegian Jewish girl who was pulled from her classroom in front of classmates and sent to a concentration camp, never to return. Meanwhile, in the drawing “family portrait,” the Klein family is reunited one more time.
A big thanks to the people involved in this conversation, Marie, Anne-Gro, RAMM 🦄, Lili, Paula, Mette, Elin, Pshem, Musab, Prerna, Morten, School teachers,, Trøndelag kommune, the committee, Atelier Ilsvika♥️