ABOUT

Thick layers of paint, loose lines, charcoal, and crumbling pigments. Photographic traces, stitched and collaged elements anchoring what is in flux.

I work with materials that carry traces of lived life: old books, notes, maps, postcards, newspapers. Fragments from different times and places are layered, torn, and at times sewn together, forming the basis for new spaces and connections. For me, these are not just materials, but carriers of experience — of memory, displacement, and presence.

Within the works, a movement emerges between the concrete and the dissolving, between what can be recognized and what slips out of position. Stitching becomes both a physical and conceptual gesture — a way of holding together what is coming apart.

The works unfold as layered landscapes where inner and outer experiences meet, and where meaning arises in the tension between presence and absence.

I am interested in creating open works — spaces one can enter, lose orientation, and perhaps find new connections to one’s own experiences, memories, and states of mind.

Artist Bio

Lise Bjerkan is an Oslo-based visual artist working at the intersection of painting, photography, and text. Her practice explores dislocations of place, identity, and experience, moving between the concrete and the imagined.

Through a layered and partially fragmented visual language, she constructs spaces where photographic traces, text fragments, and drawn elements act as residues of lived experience. Using her own photographs alongside collage, charcoal, ink, and paint, she creates works that hold both presence and absence, balancing recognition with disorientation.

Bjerkan holds a background in fine art (Nydalen Art School) and photography (Oslo School of Photography), as well as a PhD in social anthropology and a master’s degree in journalism. This interdisciplinary foundation informs a practice concerned with how we perceive, inhabit, and make sense of a reality in flux.

Her works can be seen as visual investigations of spaces — external and internal — where something has shifted, and where meaning emerges in the tension between what is and what is no longer accessible.

Exhibitions & Competitions

Magan Gallery, London, England

Spring Tide - a new wave of art in Tooting

Group Exhibition, 22. May - 7. June 2025

Curated by: Agnieszka Lokaj

Host: Gosia Oldakowski-Pacak

Vestfold Art Fair, Tønsberg, Norway

Group Exhibition, 17. - 21. April 2025

Curated by: Kristine Ravndal Gabrielli

The Independent Photographer 2025

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY AWARD - portfolio