Opening: Our New Garden
Event
Saturday 6 June 2026, 12:00 – 21:00
Kunsthall Stavanger’s new garden is a site for contemporary art and community gathering, featuring inaugural contributions by three leading Norwegian female artists: Stine Janvin, Lina Viste Grønli, and Tori Wrånes.
Stavanger’s 2025 Jubilee marked the 100th anniversary of the Kunsthall’s historic building, and we seized this moment to reimagine our outdoor space as a place for art, contemplation and gathering, together with new landscaping and improved universal access.
Designed with the local community at its heart, this multifunctional space welcomes visitors of all ages, improves accessibility to the entrance, ensures a safe and engaging environment for children and young people, and extends our artistic programme beyond the walls of the institution.
Conceived as a living programme rather than a fixed display, the garden will continue to evolve over time, hosting new commissions, and permanent and temporary projects by artists in response
Kunsthall Stavanger’s new garden is a site for contemporary art and community gathering, featuring inaugural contributions by three leading Norwegian female artists: Stine Janvin, Lina Viste Grønli, and Tori Wrånes.
Stavanger’s 2025 Jubilee marked the 100th anniversary of the Kunsthall’s historic building, and we seized this moment to reimagine our outdoor space as a place for art, contemplation and gathering, together with new landscaping and improved universal access.
Designed with the local community at its heart, this multifunctional space welcomes visitors of all ages, improves accessibility to the entrance, ensures a safe and engaging environment for children and young people, and extends our artistic programme beyond the walls of the institution.
Conceived as a living programme rather than a fixed display, the garden will continue to evolve over time, hosting new commissions, and permanent and temporary projects by artists in response to this refreshed outdoor space on Madlaveien.
Opening Programme
From 6 June 2026
Stine Janvin, Nature Nurture, 2026
Vocalist, performance and sound artist Stine Janvin works with the flexibility of the voice in relation to visual and performative elements. Often inspired by electronic music, folk tradition and pop culture, she creates audiovisual works and live performances in a wide variety of contexts. In February 2025, Janvin gave birth to twins. In a new durational performance and song work titled Nature Nurture, she will bury the twins' placenta in the Kunsthall’s garden, on top of which she will plant a live apple tree. The performance is a sacrificial ritual that grants new life to the garden – a resurrection of what was once destroyed. The apple tree will grow alongside the city and the Kunsthall, providing shade and fruit for visitors and artists alike.
Tori Wrånes, CATn DOG, 2025
Singer and visual artist Tori Wrånes works with voice, sculpture, installation and people, and is known for her immersive, dreamlike scenarios. The artist’s sculpture, CATn DOG, portrays a bronze cat and dog lying on their sides looking at one another with a mixture of curiosity and animosity. Their tails have grown together and they are forever bound. The sculpture points to the complex relationships between two beings, be they animal, human, land, or planet, while also revealing how art can become a starting point for both intense connection and debate.
Lina Viste Grønli, On Balance (Alt i alt), 2026
Lina Viste Grønli’s work often takes the form of sculptures, assemblages and can include both readymades, small-scale ephemeral sculptures as well as monumental installations in public spaces. In this newly commissioned work for the Kunsthall, Grønli creates a meeting between a boulder sourced from the surrounding landscape and ordinary stainless steel spoons. The work operates within a field of semiosis, where meaning is not fixed but produced through displacement and association. Familiar objects are removed from their normal contexts, allowing new interpretations to surface. What do mundane objects like spoons and rocks mean when taken out of their usual settings, and what associations emerge when they are placed together? The contrasting material, scale, and use of these objects are set into equilibrium, a sculptural ‘balancing act’ that recalls zen gardens while remaining open to free association.
The opening programme of Kunsthall Stavanger’s garden is curated by former director, Hanne Mugaas, director, Joseph Constable, and curator, Heather Jones.
Kunsthall Stavanger Garden is supported by Bergensenstiftelse, Norske Kunstforeninger, Rogaland Fylkeskommune, Sparebanken Vest, Sparebankstiftelsen SR-Bank, and Stavanger Kommune. Part of the City Anniversary: Stavanger 2025.
Stine Janvin
Vocalist, performance and sound artist Stine Janvin works with the flexibility of the voice in relation to visual elements. Channelling sensory responses, , she focuses on elements such as costume and light, as well as the spatial and physical properties of sound. Often inspired by electronic music, folk music and pop culture, Janvin creates audiovisual works and live performances for a wide range of different venues, such as theatres, clubs and galleries, and more recently websites and digital platforms.
Since spring 2021, Janvin has been touring with the live project Echoic Choir, produced in collaboration with choreographer Ula Sickle. The project won the award at the Wiener Festwochen and has recently been presented at MACBA Barcelona, Mattatoio in Rome, the Venice Biennale's opening week and MUNCH in Oslo. Janvin has recently presented works at Performa Telethon and Issue Project Room, New York; Rokolectiv, Bucharest; Kunsthall Stavanger and MUNCH, as well as the work Chords for Calling presented at Deutschlandradio Kultur and Berliner Künstlerprogramm.
Tori Wrånes
Tori Wrånes works with voice, sculpture, installation and people. She is a singer and visual artist and is known for her dreamlike scenarios in everything from small to gigantic productions. It can be above or below water, on a mountainside or in a ski resort.
Wrånes had her international breakthrough with the commissioned work YES NIX for the Performa 13 Biennale in New York, and has since delivered commissioned works all over the world, including for the Sydney Biennale,Australia, the Lagos Biennale, Nigeria and the Thailand Biennale. She has presented exhibitions at SculptureCenter New York, USA,, Dhaka Art Foundation, Bangladesh Colombo Art Biennale, Sri Lanka, and Shulamit Nazarian Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, amongst others. Wrånes, alongside Klara Kristalova and Benjamin Orlow, is representing the Nordic Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Lina Viste Grønli
Lina Viste Grønli is known for her multilayered, sometimes surreal and often humorous projects, where language and text in various forms are included as key elements. Grønli’s work mainly takes the form of sculptures, assemblages and can include both readymades, small-scale ephemeral sculptures as well as monumental installations in public spaces.
Grønli has exhibited at several major art institutions in Europe and the USA. She has produced public artworks for, among others, the UN Plaza in New York, the Norwegian Digital Agency in Leikanger and Munkerud School in Oslo. In 2021, Grønli's monument to Kim Friele, Benkene til Kim, was installed at Vågsallmenningen in Bergen. The work consists of three benches shaped like the letters KIM, and was unveiled on the famous activist's 86th birthday, May 27. Viste Grønli is a graduate of the Aarhus School of Art (1998–1999) and the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts (1999–2003). She lives and works in Stavanger, Norway.