On Friday 22nd May the Nimble Weavers art exhibition will open at Hordaland Kunstsenter and be open until the 9th of August 2026.
This exhibition is the result of a transdisciplinary collaboration and Artist-in-Residence programme associated with the NFR funded project ACTIONABLE led by Alicia Donnellan Barraclough and the Nimble Weavers initiative coordinated by Robin Everett. The artist Ase Brunborg Lie has been in residence with the ACTIONABLE project, visiting Nordhordland Biosphere Region, participating in the research of PhD student Janne Thomsen and conducting workshops in the region. The resulting art piece will be on display in Hordaland Kunstsenter until traveling to Nordhordland Region in the fall.
MORE ABOUT NIMBLE WEAVERS ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
How is the value of our surroundings affected by a landscape under continuous change? What role and agency do local inhabitants feel they have? How do we negotiate conflicting values of nature and belonging within modern energy landscapes?
These are central questions in Ase Brunborg Lie’s exhibition Nimble Weavers.
Nimble Weavers is a one-year interdisciplinary collaboration with artist Ase Brunborg Lie and the NFR-project ACTIONABLE at the University of Bergen (UiB) led by Alicia Donnellan Barraclough. Through research and workshops conducted in the Nordhordland UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, they have focused on energy infrastructure, land-use conflicts, and local engagement. A Biosphere Reserve is a UNESCO designation for a region with high biological and cultural diversity, demonstrating a balanced relationship between people and nature. They can act as learning sites for sustainable development, testing approaches to social and ecological change.
Over the past year, the artist has worked alongside UiB doctoral student Janne Thomsen, part of the ACTIONABLE team, travelling around the Biosphere Reserve, where Thomsen interviewed landowners, local residents, interest groups, industry, municipalities and state administrators about natural values, spatial planning and (local) agency. Brunborg Lie has also, in collaboration with Thomsen, held several workshops in the Biosphere Reserve in collaboration with local libraries and hiking groups, with silent listening walks, drawing exercises and discussions around points of conflict, both potential and actual.
Through collaboration, workshops with locals, and field-based research, Brunborg Lie work to formulate situated knowledge about the landscape and our relationship to it through sensing, mapping, and storytelling of what may be abstract or inaccessible.