Anna Daniell
A CAIRN FOR OUR CHILDREN
For a memorial site, Anna Daniell proposes a work of art whose metaphorical basis is a cairn that will appear as a unified yet diverse artistic landscape.
The Norwegian word for “cairn”, varde, is related to words meaning “to be wary”, “to be aware”, “to be on guard”, “to prevent”, and “to be responsible”. Physically, a cairn is a formation consisting of many individual pieces, where each piece acts as a support system for all the others. Daniell seeks to create a work of art composed of seventy-seven parts, with one part for each of the victims of the terrorist attack. She will include a democratic and collective voice by inviting seventy-seven other artists to make their own symbolic contributions to the work.
– Anna Daniell
Anna Daniell
Anna Daniell (born 1978) lives and works in Nesodden outside of Oslo and studied at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, the Fontys Academy of the Arts in Tilburg, the Netherlands, and the European Film College in Ebeltoft, Denmark. She was born in Fredrikstad and raised in Nesodden, after her parents moved to Norway from Poland in 1974. Daniell has previously lived and worked in the Netherlands, England, Germany, South Korea, and Ecuador.
Sculpture’s contemporary potential, function, and possibilities of exploring new production and display contexts have been a common thread in her artistic practice over the past twenty years, both inside and outside of established exhibition venues. Daniell has created several permanent public decorations such as in Oslo City Hall (2021), where she made sculptures representing each district in Oslo and then invited a local resident from each district to whisper a secret to their district’s sculpture prior to its installation.
Her solo and group exhibitions include ones for Lorck Schive Kunstpris, Trondheim Art Museum, Hennie Onstad Kunstsenter, Kunsthall Trondheim, Podium, Cabaret der Kunstler – Zunfthaus Voltaire, Manifesta 11 (Switzerland), the Open Source Gallery (New York), Stavanger Art Museum, the Total Museum of Contemporary Art (South Korea), Kunsthall Oslo, the Autumn Exhibition, Gallery She Will, Plum Trim, the Norwegian Sculpture Biennial, Galleri Brandstrup, and Kunstnernes Hus, as well as the research project 10 Years at Heidal School. In recent years, Daniell’s art has been acquired by institutions such as Hennie Onstad Kunstsenter’s permanent collection, the Grieg Collection, and the City of Oslo Art Collection.
Daniell is currently working on a new art project for the new clinic building at the Norwegian Radium Hospital in Oslo and on a solo exhibition at Oslo Kunstforening. Daniell is represented by Galleri Brandstrup in Oslo.