Anne Szefer Karlsen, one of the curators of Experiences of Oil (12^th November 2021-18^th April 2022), an exhibition at Stavanger Art Museum which explores shared life experiences between oil nations, meets Reflecting Oil to talk about the exhibition and its rationale. Experiences of Oil is part of Szefer Karlsen’s long-term artistic research on the experience of living in oil nations, which from a Norwegian perspective draws on personal observations gathered from fieldwork and the public debate available through national and international media. Szefer Karlsen’s research speculates about trauma, especially the trauma shared among people living in oil-exporting countries which also have companies operating in other territories.

In November 2020, Szefer Karlsen’s ongoing research project became the basis for an online conference that explored social, cultural and emotional aspects associated with oil, informing the Experiences of Oil exhibition which seeks to shed new light not only on the commonalities between the world’s leading oil nations but also their nuances. Through the constellation of artworks by 16 Norwegian and international artists and art collectives, the exhibition creates the conditions for speculating about issues pertaining to shame, conflict, colonialism and neocolonialism across history.

The spatial organisation of the exhibition conveys a new geography which audiences immerse themselves in as soon as they enter the museum and encounter the work of Raqs Media Collective, Øyvind Rimbereid, Farah Al Qasimi, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Chai Siris, Otobong Nkanga, Kiyoshi Yamamoto, Monira Al Qadiri, Shirin Sabahi, Ane Graff, Christopher Cozier, Rachel O’Reilly, and Brynhild Grødeland Winther. The latter’s (specially commissioned)drawings, which are based on the artist’s experience as a sledgehammer mechanic in the oil industry, are scattered throughout the museum to promote a dialogue with the rest of the artworks, expressing the artist’s conflictive personal relationship with oil and the industry she had to work for to support her family.

By opening a unique space to reflect about what connects different oil-producing societies, Experiences of Oil, which also features art works in different public space, some of them performative, by Liv Bugge, Linda Lamignan (with David Lamignan Larsen), Alessandro Marchi, Camille Norment (in collaboration with Lisa Harris and Sarah Prosser), contributes to a public debate seeking to move away from fossil fuels.