Oda Iselin Sønderland on The Matrician: Systemic Collapse as Poetry

Oda Iselin Sønderland's multimedia exhibition The Matrician is on view at Gathering until August 1. The show combines watercolours, sculptural remains, and performances of her poems, imagining ethereal life forces. Sønderland, a Norwegian-Irish artist, discusses influences including Japanese visual culture, Hiroshige, and Olivier Schrauwen. Each painting depicts a creature's death within its landscape, with creatures constructed from their environments according to current scientific understanding. The project began with a stone found in Epping Forest that became Hip Bone; Heart was made from quartz found on an Oslo beach with borax crystals. Influences include friends Erin and Hanne, Santiago Ramón y Cajal's neural drawings, Carlo Rovelli's Reality Is Not What It Seems, and Elizabeth Grosz's Chaos, Territory, Art. The exhibition adopts museum aesthetics to critique how objects are framed and mystified. Poems performed at the opening tell cyclical stories of construction and annihilation, reflecting ecological collapse.