Gitte Sætre

“My interests lie within methods to understand particular forms of knowledge production, which in my culture circle around certain representations.

Trough various ways of working I investigate roles and positions within the art field. My temperament is well placed within my artistic praxis and working with art is a way of thinking and dealing with my embodied unrest.

The core of all our problems is that we do not dare to choose ourselves, argues the Danish philosopher Søren Kirkegaard. It is a task in it selves to choose ourselves. It requires passion and special effort. The truth lies within subjectivity because it is the key to the common. However, the self is not a set core inside us, or a product of social circumstances. The selves is a problem, a relationship that relate to it selves to deal with itself.

Thus, the self is the way we relate to the way of thinking and feeling. What makes humans unique is that we are spirit, we are aware of our own existence. Therefore, our existence is not granted, in reality it is an art in it selves.

In the process of thinking about art and society I started working with a video-performance series called Woman Cleaning, followed by a description of what I clean. Ex. Woman Cleaning Tanks, Woman Cleaning European History…

This is a series of work where I do performative penance; I clean places and/or objects. I do this because waste derives from the very essence of one’s daily life and it symbolizes our existence of, as if it were, the intimate microcosm that exposes one’s activities.

I have constructed a figure that diligently washes and tries to create harmony, gain some sort of control or at least some understanding of the world around.  The project is strongly linked to me as a person, a Norwegian female born in 1975. A generation that thought everything was possible.

The project is within the sphere of national and international politics and touches upon rituals with religious connotations, feminism, humour, hopes and dreams.” (Gitte Sætre)