Camilla Renate Nicolaisen (b.1988, Lofoten, Norway) is an artist based in Tromsø with a studio space at Kysten, the Troms Municipality Culture Centre. She is also the co-founder of Tromsø’s Open Out Festival, an annual art festival with a focus on queer perspectives. Nicolaisen received her Fine Arts Bachelor’s degree from the department of Ceramics at Bergen Academy of Art and Design, and her Master’s degree in Contemporary Art from The Art Academy of Tromsø Arctic University. 

Her artistic practice includes ceramic structures, sound art, herbal remedies, drawings and installations using natural materials. However, her work points out the necessity of going beyond the dichotomy of nature vs. culture, and enquires into how habitual knowledge can make its way into our globalized world. More generally, Nicolaisen want to challenge dominant narratives linked to colonization, gender norms and consumerism. 

Her main interest these days is the various symbiotic relationships in which our species are involved to ensure survival, and how this is changing in the face of climate change. One such art-research project she is working with is revolving around the thematic of Homo Sapiens’ relations to seagulls along the northern coast. For instance, how to read the weather and fish by observing the seagull’s sounds and movements, and how this knowledge is changing with urban landscapes, capitalist ideas of maximizing productivity, and temperature changes. 

For her exhibition with Failure, Understanding, Care (& Kunst), Nicolaisen is taking the curators at their words and will make work only using what is found and located in nearby areas. She will be working with remedies: destruction as healing, darkness as comforting, uncertainty as freeing.  

Camilla Nicolaisen’s exhibition Salt i Syr opened in summer, 2020.