Job description

PhD Research fellow at Tromsø Art Academy, UiT - The Arctic University of Norway / Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen.

Karolin is a curator and artist currently based in Romsa/Tromsø, Sápmi/Norway. Part of her practice is to write for artists, often commissioning new works, striving to present artistic practice and work with an transdisciplinary approach. 

She has a particular interest in collaborative, cross disciplinary, long term socially engaged art practices, sound, music and listening. Karolin´s curatorial practice has dealt with a wide range of topics fueled by her interests, including gentrification, city development, art in public space, rights of nature, socially engaged art and ecology, hospitality, care and the other-than-human. Since 2004 she has regularly contributed to the “forever lasting” art project Sørfinnset Skole/the nord land with artists Geir Tore Holm and Søssa Jørgensen, and together with Åse Løvgren the ongoing collaboration Rakett was initiated in 2003. During 2013 and partly 2014 she was serving as director of Konsthall C in Stockholm and transformed the directorship into a collaboration named the Work Group/Arbetslaget with artists akcg(anna kindgren and carina gunnars) and Anna Ahlstrand.

Tampere is since 2011 part of Ensayos - a collective feminist research practice enacted by artists, scientists, activists, policymakers, and local community members. Sustaining focus on the ecopolitics of archipelagos for the past decade, Ensayos have developed distinct inquiries into extinction, human geography, and coastal health. During Summer 2020 Ensayos was part of the online artist residency at New Museum, New York, with the project “Ensayos: Passages.

In 2017-2022 she served as curator at North Norwegian Art Centre, realizing context specific projects with artists across the whole region of Northern Norway. She co-curated Lofoten Sound Art Symposium (with Svein Ingvoll Pedersen) and LIAF2019 Lofoten International Art Festival (with Hilde Mehti, Torill Østby Håland and Neal Cahoon) which received the Norwegian Critics price of honor.

In 2022 she was contributing as part of The Gift where Ensayos supported the HOL HOL TOL - The Chilean Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale. Ensayos collaborators were working with “pods” of artists and ecologists to explore the ecology and culture of peatlands local to their regions. The three groups conjured gifts of scent from international peatlands that contributed to the multisensory experience of the pavilion in Venice.

Currently Karolin is working on the project Down in the Bog – Thinking with Peatlands. A three chapter project led by an ambition to create cross-pollinating meeting grounds for art, natural science, environmental issues and the public. The three chapters project emphasizes the sharing and embodying of knowledge and awareness to create attention towards the need for increased care for peatland areas, locally, nationally and internationally. Practically and conceptually, the topic of peatlands act as a guiding map and compass to learn about historical, cultural and contemporary and geopolitical changes in the environments in Sápmi / Northern Norway, Estonia and selected places internationally. Throughout the two group exhibitions Down in the Bog: Hibernation (Tromsø Kunstforening / Romssa Dáiddasiida ) and Down in the Bog – Sporulation (EKKM - Estonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Tallinn) followed by Thinking with Peatlands symposium (co-curated with Camilla Fagerli and Tromsø Kunstforening / Romssa Dáiddasiida) followed by Thinking with Peatlands - Reverberations, where artists, natural scientists, environmental activists, school children, NGOs and the public have lent the ecosystem of peatlands as a prism for sharing, learning and collaboration.