29. march – 2. june 2019
Opening the 29th of March at 19-21
Munchmuseum on the move -Kunsthall Oslo
Dronning Eufemias gate 34
Fadlabi is one of our best painters, with a style that brings together Ethiopian church icons, barber-salon murals, Afrofuturism and Pop Art. He studied art in Khartoum, where he grew up, and in Oslo, where he has lived for over a decade; the combination of experience gives him a unique perspective. For this new-commissioned solo exhibition at Munchmuseet on the Move-Kunsthall Oslo, he is undertaking an ambitious autobiographical project that brings together painting and writing, art and life. Fadlabi has exhibited at the National Museum for Art, Architecture and Design and at the Sharjah Biennial, among many other places. He runs Khartoum Contemporary Art Center in Oslo together with Karin Erixon.
This is Fadlabi’s first major exhibition since his Kunstnerforbundet show in 2015. It will showcase a completely new body of work from one of Norway’s skilled painters. The exhibition will follow Fadlabi’s life from his childhood as the son of a doctor in Khartoum, through the Sudanese civil war and his refugee journey, to his chance arrival in Norway and his determination to establish himself as a citizen and artist.
The programme for Munchmuseet on the Move-Kunsthall Oslo is based on the Stenersen Collection, a gift from the Norwegian collector Rolf Stenersen to the City of Oslo in 1946. In an ironic twist that is typical Fabladi, he is the only artist in Oslo currently interested in taking forward the practice of figurative painting as public discourse which, in Stenersen’s era, was the central tradition in Norwegian art.