Oda Iselin Sønderland’s multimedia exhibition The Matrician brings watercolours into dialogue with sculptural remains and performances of her own poems, the exhibition imagines ethereal life forces. Elephant speaks with the Norwegian-Irish artist about Japanese visual culture, science, ecological collapse and the truths contained within speculative fiction. The Matrician is on display at Gathering until the first of August. Words by Sayori Radda.
How did your training in graphic design and illustration at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, together with Japanese visual culture, shape your practice?
The course immersed me in graphic novels and experimental illustration and introduced me to the work of Olivier Schrauwen. I became fascinated by the way he uses the structure of comics to shape how a story is experienced. Manga often employs similar techniques, using page turns, pacing and highly detailed spreads to create visual impact.
More recently, I have been particularly inspired by Hiroshige, whose use of line, composition and colour gradation creates an extraordinary sense of depth and atmosphere.
Do you see a more organic relationship with nature in the Japanese art that has influenced you?
There is a strong emphasis on observation, on attending to small details while identifying what gives something its essential character. Simplicity and complexity can exist simultaneously. To me, that reflects a Zen approach based on understanding rather than control.
How does an idea come to fruition?
I draw ideas from my everyday surroundings. Anything can become interesting when observed carefully. Even an ordinary door might contain an unusual pattern. It is important to allow yourself time to look, rather than constantly pursuing stimulation.
The minuscule dots that create fog in my paintings remind me of particles or atoms. Observing them closely is like watching dust suspended in light.
The paintings’ natural landscapes carry an apocalyptic atmosphere. What is happening within them?
Each painting depicts a creature’s death within its own landscape. The exhibition imagines each creature constructing its body from the environment in which it exists. I regard them as portraits, each with its own personality and history.
I wanted every creature to remain physically possible according to our current understanding of science and matter. By establishing those limits, I could allow reality to guide my imagination. They are self-aware beings whose experiences resemble our own, although their bodies operate according to different physical laws.
What connects the floating skeleton in Compass to Heart, the crystal sculpture displayed on the plinth?
The project began with the stone that became Hip Bone, which I found in Epping Forest. Its resemblance to a body part became the starting point for imagining a skeleton running through the exhibition. Each sculpture originated from an object found in nature or sourced from a market.
Heart developed differently. On a beach in Oslo, I found a piece of quartz shaped like a human heart and grew borax crystals on it in a saturated solution. The formation of crystals in water made me think about particles combining to create planets and stars. The fiction therefore emerged from a real material process.
Science fiction may be speculative, but it often contains essential truths. Reality itself is extraordinarily complex and can appear magical when we take the time to observe it closely.
Who has influenced the scientific and philosophical dimensions of your work?
My friends Erin and Hanne, who are both artists, have been especially influential. Hanne introduced me to different ways of thinking about science, magic and neurology. She also introduced me to The Beautiful Brain, which features Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s drawings of neural networks. Encountering them, I thought, “The brain is just like a forest.” The branching structures of the neurons reminded me of roots.
Erin approaches many of these ideas intuitively and has helped me articulate them. Carlo Rovelli’s Reality Is Not What It Seems and Elizabeth Grosz’s Chaos, Territory, Art have also been important influences.
How do the museum-like presentation and display cases frame the exhibition?
Museums invite us to encounter history through objects and imagine the worlds that once surrounded them. They also reveal how inherited knowledge can be incomplete.
Ancient Greek sculptures, for example, were often brightly painted, although their pigments faded over time, leaving the marble exposed. Scientists can now identify traces of those pigments using ultraviolet light, infrared imaging and X-ray fluorescence. The disappearance of this colour helped shape the later association between white marble and classical sculpture.
By adopting museum aesthetics, the exhibition creates a fantasy around the ways objects are framed, mystified and made desirable. Storytelling determines how the past is presented and, consequently, how we perceive it.
How do death and cyclical processes shape the exhibition?
The poems I performed at the opening tell a cyclical story in which each creature constructs itself and is eventually annihilated while accepting the inevitability of death.
In Ember, fire remains part of a natural cycle. Wildfires have shaped ecosystems for millions of years. In Pirouette, the cochlea brings about its own destruction. Its intense sensory experience within the coral reef drives it to dance and sprout endless arms until nothing remains. It is systemic collapse as poetry.
Do you take cues from the ecological crisis we are facing globally?
Absolutely. These creatures were equally unable to foresee their own deaths. I wonder whether we will be able to change course in time. I remain hopeful, but I also fear that we risk ending up like the cochlea.
We have to ask why this is happening and examine the role each of us plays in it. We need to question vast systems and the people who manipulate them for their own benefit, particularly when they possess the power to enact meaningful change.
How does this exhibition depart from your usual approach?
I wanted to explore how a painting might be experienced differently by bringing elements of it into the physical world. Growing up in an Irish family, I was continually surrounded by storytelling, and I remain interested in creating narratives that feel both real and captivating.
I intend to continue exploring performance and filmmaking, using myself as a character through which to communicate ideas. It offers another means of bringing the work into reality.
