Hosting Infrastructure (imbiss)

Fotogalleriet, Oslo
March - May 2026

Shown at group exhibition: (UN)COMMONS: towards an institution otherwise
alongside Frida Jersø, Inari Sandell, Claudia Amatruda and Shelley Barry
Curated by Randi Midthun

(UN)COMMONS: towards an institution otherwise was an exhibition that asked how an art institution might be reimagined from within. Developed through a year of inquiry into access, labour, spatial politics, and structural inclusion, the project considered the gallery not as a neutral container, but as a site shaped by power, habit, and possibility.

Bringing together participating artists whose practices engage questions of visibility, care, vulnerability, refusal, and collective authorship, the exhibition foregrounds the conditions that enable cultural production. Their works attend to infrastructures: social, architectural, and bureaucratic, and insist that artistic practice is conditioned  (and often constrained) by the institutional logics that frame it.

The exhibition formed part of an ongoing process within the institution: to move beyond compliance toward accountability, beyond representation toward structural change. Accompanied by a public programme of conversations, workshops, and shared study, (UN)COMMONS proposed the gallery as a testing ground; a space where institutional habits can be examined, unsettled, and practised otherwise.

imbiss
The work was developed over the course of a ten day install period and throughout the duration of the exhibition where it took the form of a cafe / enclosed seating area. The German word ‘Imbiss’ means a small kiosk, often tended by a single person, selling quick, simple food and snacks. It is a meeting point where regulars gather, eat and hang out. 

At Fotogalleriet the Imbiss became a place where visitors could stay for a while and chat, where the staff could eat lunch and one could hide from the bright lights of the gallery.

Images by Abracadabra Studio