Guest Speaker in Bodø
Jonas Ekeberg (b. 1967) is a curator and critic based in Oslo. He is currently Head of Visual Art at Arts Council Norway. Ekeberg has been a critic for The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and various Norwegian daily newspapers. He has been chief editor for numerous magazines: Hyperfoto – Magazine for Visual Culture from 1994–1997, Siksi – The Nordic Art Review in 1995 and Billedkunst, the journal of the Norwegian artist’s organization, from 1999-2000. Ekeberg was the chief curator of Momentum – The Nordic biennial for contemporary art in 2000 and founding director of Oslo Kunsthall from 2000–2001. Subsequently he was a curator at the Office for Contemporary Art Norway from 2002-2004. In 2003, Ekeberg curated the 50th anniversary exhibition for the National Touring Exhibitions of Norway, Art to the People. From 2004 to 2009 Ekeberg served as the director of Preus Museum, Norway’s national museum for photography. His exhibitions for Preus Museum include Photography’s Expanded Field, Skate Culture, Technology & Aesthetics, 80 million pictures – Norwegian vernacular photography 1855–2005 and Lessons in the Art of Falling – Photographs of Norwegian Performance and Process Art 1966–2009. From 2009 to 2014 and 2015-2019 Ekeberg was the chief editor of the Nordic online journal Kunstkritikk. In 2015-2016 he co-curated and chaired the lecture series «Nordic Art and Its Discontents» at Tate Modern, London, UK. In 2020 and 2021 Ekeberg was the director of Fotografihuset, a new center for photography under development in Oslo, while at the same time curating a series of new acquisitions for KORO (Art in Public Space) at the Ørland air force base. Ekeberg has lectured and published widely. His monograph «Post Nordic – The rise and fall of the Nordic art scene 1976–2016» is forthcoming in English (Norwegian edition: Oslo: Torpedo Press, 2019).
