"During the residency, I aim to explore how natural dyeing—through plants and wool sourced from Nordic landscapes—can serve as a bridge between my West African heritage and my upbringing in Norway. By blending materials, memory, and tradition, I hope to create sculptural works that reflect how diasporic identities root and transform across geographies."
Artist´s Statement
My research-based artistic practice investigates heritage, diasporic narratives, pleasure, and collective care within BIPOCQ* communities (* Black, Indigenous, People of Color and Queer). My work spans textiles, video, ritualistic performance, and community-engaged craftwork. I view the body as a layered archive entangled with memory, knowledge, and emotion, where rituals serve as activators to access these materials. My intention is to explore the hybridity that comes with African diasporic complexity, delving into topics of pleasure activism, transformation, and agency.
Recently, soil has become a guiding body, allowing me to dig deeper into these living fibers while attempting to escape the oppressive machine of imperial patriarchal violence. Fiber becomes a material where the diaspora can be in dialogue with ancestral knowledge and soil also symbolises a way to unearth personal and collective histories, fostering care and exploring alternative ways of being. My work manifests in wearable sculptures for performative rituals that reveal the body’s potential for shape-shifting, aligned with Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russell and Fugitive Feminism by Akwugo Emejulu.
Currently I'm exploring soil as a living archive where the diaspora can be in dialogue with ancestral knowledge and soil also symbolises a way to unearth personal and
collective histories, fostering care and exploring alternative ways of being.
Biography
Marie Cole is a visual artist based in Oslo with Guinean and Senegalese heritage. She holds an MFA in Art and Public Space from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and a MA in Visual Communication from the University for the Creative Arts, UK. Her recent exhibitions include PROCESS at Fotogalleriet (2025), Makt over landskapet at Galleri KunstSkansen (2025), Reflection Sanctuary at Gamle Munch (2024), the Autumn Exhibition at Kunstnernes Hus (2023), and her solo show Connecting Dots and Knots at Kunsthall Oslo (2023). During the last 5 year have been hosting collective engaged craft workshops for all ages.
