Nearly 800m2 of the square between the Høyblokka building and Akersgata in Oslo’s new Government Quarter will be used for art. The artwork will be integrated next to the historic alley of linden trees in the middle of the square. This illustration shows the rough placement of the artwork. Illustration: Jumana Manna/Silvia Diaconu Fly-Collective AS/Team Urbis/Norwegian Directorate of Public Construction and Property

The city floor of the new Government Quarter

One of the biggest and most visible spaces in Oslo’s new Government Quarter is the city floor, accessible to all who pass through or visit the area. The artist Jumana Manna is currently designing an artwork that will unfold over some 800 sqm. of this outdoor floor.

The square at Johann Nygaardsvoll plass, facing Akersgata, will be one of the biggest publicly accessible areas for art in the Government Quarter, and marks the entrance to the whole area from the west.

The square will be capable of facilitating many types of large and small events: ceremonies, demonstrations, speeches and general city life. After an invitation to 10 artists, a jury selected the Berlin-based Palestinian artist Jumana Manna`s proposal.

The artwork, with the working title Substitute, will be an 800m² floor made of reclaimed stone. For well over 300 years, granite has been used in civil and urban structures, in industry and in defences in Norway. Manna wants to invite the government, municipalities, energy companies and others to donate stone from such structures as pavements, walls, dams, power stations, town halls, schools and farms. The choice of material will involve the whole country in this artwork, and strongly encourages the sustainable use of natural resources and a circular economy. Jumana Manna says of the work:

My proposal explores Norway’s material history in relation to nature and the extraction of resources, economy and identity. Through this work, I will explore recycling or reuse as a conceptual and infrastructural ethic, and highlight the idea that something must be given up in order for the collective to continue to live and grow sustainably together.

The artwork is a collaboration between Jumana Manna and experienced artisans from Agaia. It is constructed at a barn in Lier before being relocated to Oslo and completed in 2025. The donated stones are from bridges, fences, dams, power plants, factories, town halls, and schools across Norway. Photo: Niklas Hart

The artwork’s eventual design will not be clear until all the stone has been gathered and composed into a larger whole, which the artist will carry out in collaboration with experienced artisans from Agaia over the next year.

Press release: KORO commissiones an 800m2 collage of stone

Jumana Manna (born 1987, USA) grew up in Jerusalem, and lives and works in Berlin. Manna studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo. Through film, sculpture and installations, she investigates storytelling linked to power, language and memories. For the artwork Government Quarter Study from 2014, she took full-size casts of the columns from the interior of the Høyblokka government building. The artwork was shown in the Henie Onstad Art Centre’s widely discussed exhibition in 2014, We Live on a Star, which discussed the events in the Government Quarter during the attacks of 22nd July, 2011. The work was later shown in the Nordic Pavilion during the Venice Biennale in 2017.

Invited competitions are one of several methods used in procuring art for the new Government Quarter. Read more about this here (Norwegian text only).

You can read more about the building project for the new Government Quarter on Statsbygg’s website. (the Norwegian Directorate of Public Construction and Property). If you want to know more about KORO’s work with the Government Quarter’s art project, our project page contains more information, the art strategy and the art plan (Norwegian text only).