In recent years, working with text in combination with the visual, as well as text itself, has become increasingly central in Kristoffersen's art. She has used text as an expression in previous works; in installations with history as a theme, in prose linked to video works known as video prose, and as poems in book form. The texts constitute a prolongation of the visual works and move into the private space, mirroring something more intimate and seemingly insignificant. Beretningen om et varslet brudd / An Account of Predicted Estrangement is her second book of poems. The book consists of 29 poems in English and Norwegian. The title of the exhibition refers to a poem of the same name from her first publication, labile dokumenter / volatile documents, published in 2013. In Kristoffersen's drawings, the covered portrait has been a recurring theme, a reference to the strategies used in different cultures for expressing identity through covering and uncovering of the body. There are references to a portrait tradition where headgear and clothing were an important part of the contextualization of the object. In contrast to previous imagery, the expression in Kristoffersen's recent drawings is toned down to create a cooler distance. The works mainly keep to scales of gray in warm and cold tones done with colored pencil on black paper. The expression represents an extension of the portrait / self-portrait where the absence of the people tells stories through the characteristics of the imagery, and where this absence creates room for interpretations. The video prose The Other is a paraphrase of Simone De Beauvoir`s theories in Le deuxième sexe, I, II, 1949; she is determined and separated in relation to the man, not he in relation to her: she is the insignificant to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute: she is the Other. The work is the gaze, through mirroring the thesis the Other is constructed.
Hanne Lydia Opøien Kristoffersen is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Trondheim (NO) and Konstfack, College of Art and Design, Stockholm, (SE). Kristoffersen works with drawing, video and text within themes such as gender and identity. She has an extensive number of solo exhibitions behind her and has received several scholarships and awards, including the Weidemann Prize and the Håkon Bleken Prize. In 2015, she received the Jury's Award at the North Norwegian Art Exhibition, DNNK.
