Diorama
Excerpt from a review by Tommy Olsson, published in Klassekampen, January 2023. English translation by Ingvild Adelaine Eiring / ChatGPT (2026).
https://klassekampen.no/artikkel/2023-01-18/det-er-virkelig-spokelser-her
Ingvild Eiring
Kjøpmannsgata Ung Kunst, Trondheim
On view until January 22, 2023.
There isn’t much time left to catch this gem of an exhibition, tucked away at the far end of the basement corridors of Kjøpmannsgata Ung Kunst (K-U-K) in Trondheim—so for heaven’s sake, grab a cup of coffee and bring the kids. Although I have a feeling this will eventually find its way into the permanent collection of a museum somewhere, that may not happen anytime soon.
Diorama is as much a title as it is a description. What we are really looking at here is meticulous model-making: a series of tableaux, slightly larger than dollhouses, where the year is usually 1895 or 1917, and every figure is a mouse. It feels as though it has stepped straight out of a book of fables, sharing a family resemblance with Art Spiegelman’s Maus and a whole host of other graphic narratives.
“Most of it is just a little too dark to slide effortlessly into the Christmas exhibition at Steen & Strøm.”
More than anything, however, these works remind me of the miniature installations that appeared at street level in Malmö some years ago, created by an artist working under the pseudonym Anonymouse: tiny cafés and restaurants for rodents, forming a complete microcosm within the public space. Naturally, they were not left undisturbed for long before someone decided to vent their frustrations on them. Such are the conditions of anything that falls under the heading of street art, and I am grateful that these dioramas are indoors rather than exposed to disgruntled pub-goers making their solitary way home.
Among the scenes Eiring has recreated in mouse form is The Black Lodge from the television series Twin Peaks.
In many ways, what Ingvild Eiring has built is a time machine. Her work revolves around forms of spirituality that have long since been dismissed as historical curiosities, folklore, or religious belief. It is doubtful these installations would resonate as strongly as they do were it not mice attempting to contact the beyond or being awakened by ghosts. Of course not. After all, that is what fables are for. The aesthetic of the children’s storybook also brings with it a much-needed sense of safety, even if, in the end, it is our souls that are at stake.
Even when we move a hundred years forward in time, to her reconstruction of The Black Lodge from Twin Peaks, the work remains firmly centred on the secret history of the twentieth century: closed societies, occult rituals, and hidden knowledge. The very same territory now occupied by television programmes about paranormal investigations and YouTube videos in which people wander through abandoned asylums and orphanages at night carrying recording equipment. Here, however, these themes are presented in their formative phase, in a lost world where electricity is still a novelty—something almost as transformative as the internet would later become.
The tension between doubt and belief is heightened by the fact that these works function perfectly well regardless of whether one chooses to define them as contemporary art or not. I admit that I am not entirely certain I would have done so had they been presented outside an art institution.
Then again, where else would one exhibit a recreation of the levitation scene from The Exorcist, complete with mice holding crucifixes against the possessed? Nearly everything here—if not absolutely everything—is just a little too strange, and a little too dark, to slip effortlessly into the Christmas exhibition at Steen & Strøm. Yet it would not be entirely out of place in a display case at a library, somewhere near the shelves containing H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe.
The subject matter, craftsmanship, and visual language all suggest an audience far beyond this hidden corner of a basement, even if there is an obvious logic to the location as well. This is not merely for specialists or niche enthusiasts, let us put it that way.
On the leaden-grey Sunday when I make my way around K-U-K, there are surprisingly many visitors in the building, and almost a queue to enter the exhibition room. Less surprising, and perhaps tellingly so, is the fact that the most enthusiastic members of the audience have not yet reached puberty.
As one might expect, people are more receptive at that age.
