Lecture by renowned curator and art scholar Lynne Cooke, panel discussion with Cooke, Lars Bang Larsen, and Marit Paasche. Introduction by Solveig Øvstebø.

“I could not have become an artist in any other way than through the threads.”
– Synnøve Anker Aurdal

By combining traditional craft techniques and the language of painterly abstraction, Synnøve Anker Aurdal (1908-2000) reinvented tapestry-making and created a new space for modern textile art. Her works took on a singular and effervescent character by featuring materials such as copper thread, polyester, fiberglass, nylon, metal chains and – most controversially – synthetic dyes. Despite a thriving career and frequent media presence in Norway, the fact that Anker Aurdal was a woman with no academic artistic education, working in feminized artistic media, shaped her trajectory and the reception of her work. As the most comprehensive monograph on Anker Aurdal’s work to date, Through the Threads writes a new, and sorely missing, chapter on the oeuvre and six-decade career of this pioneering artist. 

The book compiles newly commissioned texts by Lars Bang Larsen, Marit Paasche, Jenni Sorkin, Leire Vergara, and an interview by Solveig Øvstebø with Siri Aurdal, Anker Aurdal’s daughter. Included as a book-within-the-book is Poems to Synnøve Anker Aurdal, a collection of newly commissioned poems originally published for the exhibition at Astrup Fearnley Museet. The book is richly illustrated with images from the exhibition and archive photos of Synnøve Anker Aurdal. All texts are in English and Norwegian. Through the Threads is a printed sequel to the retrospective exhibition Synnøve Anker Aurdal, held at Astrup Fearnley Museet in 2022.

Synnøve Anker Aurdal
Through the Threads
With Lars Bang Larsen, Marit Paasche, Jenni Sorkin, Leire Vergara, Solveig Øvstebø
Editors Lars Bang Larsen, Solveig Øvstebø
Design Johannes Barlaup Jellum, Sandra Stokka
Published by Astrup Fearnley Museet og Mousse Publishing, 2024
Price: 690,-

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Lynne Cooke is senior curator in the department of modern and contemporary art at the National Gallery of Art, after being appointed senior curator for special projects in modern art in 2014. Cooke was deputy director and chief curator at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid; curator at the Dia Art Foundation in New York and artistic director at the 10th Biennale of Sydney. She has also taught at London University, Yale University, CCS, Bard College og La Trobe University. I 2023 she published Woven Histories – Textiles and Modern Abstraction (The University of Chicago Press).

Lars Bang Larsen is a writer, curator, and head of artistic research at Art Hub Copenhagen. Before this, inter alia, he has been affiliated with Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Haute école d’art et de design, Geneva; Kungliga Konsthögskolan, Stockholm; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin. He is together with Solveig Øvstebø editor of the publication Through the Threads.

Marit Paasche is an independent curator, art historian, and writer. Paasche is the author of Hannah Ryggen. Threads of Defiance (Thames and Hudson and University of Chicago Press, 2019), named best art book of the year by New York Times and best book of the year by Times Literary Supplement. Paasche has also been the editor of numerous books; We Are Living on a Star (Sternberg Press, 2014), Et annet lerret. Fire historier om film og billedkunst (Feil forlag, 2013), A Thousand Eyes: Media Technology, Law, and Aesthetics (Sternberg Press, 2011), and Urban Images: Unruly Desires in Film and Architecture (Sternberg Press 2011). Paasche is one of the contributors to the publication Through the Threads.

Solveig Øvstebø is an art historian, curator, and director at Astrup Fearnley Museet, where she has presented exhibitions featuring artists such as Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Rachel Harrison, Nicole Eisenman, Leonard Rickhard, and Synnøve Anker Aurdal. She previously served as director and chief curator at The Renaissance Society and Bergen Kunsthall. Together with Lars Bang Larsen, she is the editor of the publication Through the Threads.

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