And Their Spirits Live On

How can a centuries-old plaster cast of a two-thousand-year-old sculpture speak to us today? Plaster copies of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures have formed the basis for much of the history of art. Right up until modern times artists in the western tradition learned to draw and shape works from such models. When the National Gallery was built, the central building housed a collection of these classical plaster casts.

Marianne Heier has chosen to make a performance among the plaster copies at the Academy of Art in Milan where she herself studied, and later in the empty bank premises which until recently housed the Museum of Contemporary Art – drawing attention to the potential power in these figures. They are archetypes that we still refer to, although we are often unaware of this. Heier’s performance takes the form of a museum guided tour in which she takes the role of guide, situating the plaster sculptures in wider histories. Using texts taken from classical mythology and political resistance movements, she shows the potentially radical possibilities of the sculptures. The mythology from which these classical figures are taken is full of critiques of power, gender issues and identity politics that perhaps suggest a need for civil courage in the political climate of our own times.

The performance in Oslo was co-curated by osloBIENNALEN curators and Alessandra Pioselli in collaboration with students and employees at the Project School in Oslo, and students from Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan.

From the Old Museum of Contemporary Art at Bankplassen in Oslo, Norway, 26th May 2019.

THE FORMER MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
The monumental building at Bankplassen 4 was originally built as the headquarters of the Norwegian central bank Norges Bank in 1907. During the period 1990–2017, the building housed the Museum of Contemporary Art, which held the National Museum’s collections of post-1945 art, and programmed changing exhibitions of contemporary art. The Museum closed its doors in September 2017, as the collection is to be moved to the new National Museum scheduled to open in 2020. Today, the building is managed by the state-owned property management company Statsbygg and is let out for various events. It is not yet clear what use the building will be given in the future.