CAMILLE HENROT: MOUTH TO MOUTH

MUNCH is delighted to announce the solo exhibition of Camille Henrot, one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary art today. Since Henrot received the Edvard Munch Art Award in 2015, she has continued to engage audiences the world over with her playful, thought-provoking and inventive work.

“The Edvard Munch Art Award enables us to show some of the very best international artists working today,” says Stein Olav Henrichsen, director of MUNCH. “The jury in 2015 were right in their predictions of how Camille Henrot’s career has developed, and it is a great pleasure to finally open this solo exhibition of our initial recipient of the award at the recently opened MUNCH.”

“Over the last few years, Camille Henrot has shown herself to be one of the most interesting and incisive artists of our times, and I am excited that audiences will get to see these new works in a unique setting in Oslo,” says Tominga O’Donnell, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at MUNCH.

The exhibition at MUNCH, entitled Mouth to Mouth, focuses on new and recent works from two of Henrot’s series: paintings, drawings and bronze sculpture from System of Attachment (2018–22) and prints on canvas from Dos and Don’ts (2022). The exhibition is organised into four acts, distinctly marked by different wall and floor textures, designed by Kolab Architects. Oslo-based artist Lin Wang has created the ceramic sculptures that cover the unique magnet-based mounting system for Henrot’s unglassed pictures, which provide visitors with a rare intimacy with the work on display.

Mouth to Mouth is entered via a brown, felt-lined corridor where Henrot explores non-verbal relationships and fluid points of connection. In the early stages of childhood, the mouth is a site of exploration and understanding. The infant is highly susceptible in this preverbal state and the caregiver can also experience regression in the act of caring for another – being reminded of their own early conceptions of the world. Henrot is interested in the ambivalent relationship between the child and parent, perhaps most evident in Mother Tongue, of which there are eight on display in this exhibition.

Dos and Don’ts is a new series, featuring works shown for the very first time at MUNCH. It is inspired by 19th century books on manners and explores the relationship between social codes and computer code, etiquette and algorithms with an emphasis on failure. Each image in the series is a layered collage, and includes fragments of etiquette manuals, screen grabs of social media feeds, desktop error messages, playlists and Henrot’s own drawings. Using computer software to draw, digitize and replicate her own brushstrokes, Henrot plays with established ideas of artistic originality and creation in a digital world.

The final space, reached through a grey felt-lined corridor, is a green-carpeted room that contains Henrot’s monumental bronze sculpture Family of Men (2022) – a new addition to the System of Attachment series that premieres at MUNCH. It is loosely inspired by the fairytale of The Town Musicians of Bremen, in which outcast animals find a new home by working together and standing on each other’s backs. The sculpture shows hybrid creatures forming a pile, in which it is unclear who is carrying the most weight. Family of Men offers an image of the crushing power of authority and ancestry. In a society that is heavily modelled on a patriarchal family system, everyone experiences pressure, from the bottom to the top.

About the Artist

Camille Henrot (b. 1978 in Paris) lives and works in New York City. She is an internationally acclaimed artist who works across a broad range of media – from research-based installations and film to hand-drawn images and paintings and bronze cast sculpture. Henrot’s work captures the complexity of living as both private individuals and global citizens in an increasingly connected and over-stimulated world.

In 2013, Henrot received widespread critical acclaim for Grosse Fatigue (2013), for which she was awarded the Silver Lion at the 55th Venice Biennale. In 2017, she was given Carte Blanche at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, where she presented the major exhibition Days Are Dogs. Henrot has had numerous exhibitions worldwide, including at the New Museum, New York; Fondazione Memmo, Rome; Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Japan and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Other solo exhibitions in 2022 include Salzburger Kunstverein in Austria and Middelheim Museum in Belgium.

Camille Henrot is represented by kamel mennour (Paris, London) and Hauser & Wirth.

Notes to editors

The Edvard Munch Art Award (EMAA) is an acknowledgement of Edvard Munch's historical significance and enduring relevance to contemporary culture. The award is given to an artist under the age of 40, who has demonstrated exceptional talent in the last five years. The award includes a solo exhibition at MUNCH. Previous recipients of EMAA include Camille Henrot (2015), Kerstin Brätsch (2017) and Lawrence Abu Hamdan (2019).

Mouth to Mouth is an exhibition of over 60 new and recent works by Camille Henrot from the series System of Attachment (2018–2022) and Dos and Don’ts (2022).

The exhibition has been curated by Dr Tominga O’Donnell, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at MUNCH.

The exhibition designers of Mouth to Mouth are Kolab Architects (Anna Aniksdal and Sindre Wam).

MUNCH is the name of the Munch Museum’s new building on Oslo’s waterfront of Bjørvika. The 13-storey, 26 313 square-meter building was designed by estudio Herreros and opened in October 2021.