NO / EN

KAREN KVILTU LIDAL

How to Live Together

24 September - 1 November 2026

Karen Kviltu Lidal is interested in weaving as a form of architecture - an architecture based on women’s technical and aesthetic knowledge, which has often been undervalued, and which is closely connected to the body and the domestic sphere. Her projects are textile objects and installations, based on the connection between body and architecture. Lidal examines how measurements, dimensions, and structures influence who is given space, how we move, and how we experience the world.

Somewhere between the floor and the ceiling of the gallery space is the height of an average Western man. With one arm raised, according to Le Corbusier, he would reach 226 cm above the ground. This measurement became a widespread standard for ceiling height in the mass construction of social-functionalistic architecture in the post-war period. In the exhibition How to Live Together, we are presented with an alternative structure; spanning the entire width of the room, a carpet creates a bodily and soft architectural installation.

The carpet is handwoven from unbleached linen and pale pink wool, assembled from 90 cm-wide sections, the width of Lidal’s loom. Each section has its own striped pattern. Stripes are a traditional and logical decorative element in weaving, in which either the warp or the weft alternately dominates. The sections are joined together with neon-yellow nylon straps, referring to building construction. The straps are attached to the wall using plywood panels, representing one of today’s standards in residential construction. The carpet measures approximately 4.4 x 4.4 metres, and visitors are invited to walk underneath it.

The title How to Live Together is borrowed from the French social theorist Roland Barthes’s book, which explores loneliness, community, and how much contact with others we need in order to live and create on our own terms. It points toward the exhibition’s questions about how we create spaces, how we coexist with others, and how architecture shapes the relationship between “me” and “we.”

Karen Kviltu Lidal (b. 1979 in Akershus) lives and works in Fredrikstad. She received her master’s degree from Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2008. Lidal has exhibited at Kunstnerforbundet, Tegnerforbundet, Sandnes Kunstforening, and Moss Kunstforening, among others. She has also participated in group exhibitions at Contextile Biennial in Portugal, the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź in Poland, Kunstnernes Hus, the National Museum, SOFT, and Lillehammer Art Museum. Her works have been acquired by the Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum in Trondheim and KODE museums in Bergen.

The exhibition is supported by the Arts Council Norway.