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Liv Ingeborg Ottersen (b. 1966) is a Norwegian visual artist working across painting, textile and installation. Her practice explores fragments, memory and transformation through materials including tulle, thread, paper, gold leaf and sections of earlier paintings.

 

Since returning to Norway in 2023, Ottersen has increasingly moved beyond the boundaries of the canvas. She cuts, relocates and sews together painted fragments, allowing threads and textiles to extend into the surrounding space. In her installations, translucent materials enter into dialogue with architectural structures, creating shifting relationships between fragility and solidity, surface and space.

 

Participation is also central to Ottersen’s recent work. Handwritten messages, suspended threads and accumulating paper fragments allow installations to develop through the presence and actions of others. Rather than presenting a fixed or completed whole, the works remain open to movement, alteration and new connections. Across both painting and installation, traces of what has been broken, displaced or preserved become starting points for new forms.

 

Ottersen studied at Otis College of Art and Design and received her BFA from the Art Institute of Southern California. She also studied Art Direction at Westerdals School of Communication and attended the National Teachers College for Arts and Crafts in Oslo. Having lived and worked in Los Angeles, Copenhagen, London, Granada and Oslo, her practice has been shaped by movement between places, materials and cultural contexts.

 

Recent presentations include the participatory installation Unspoken Messages at the Larnaca Biennale in 2025, a site-specific installation at The Pavilion in Frogner Park, Oslo, in 2026, and work presented at Transcendentalia in St. Adalbert’s Church, WrocÅ‚aw, Poland.

EDUCATION

 

National Teachers College for Arts and Crafts, Oslo, Norway — 1989–1990
 

Westerdals School of Communication, Art Direction, Oslo, Norway — 1990–1992
 

The National College of Art and Design, Apprenticeship, Oslo, Norway — 1992–1993
 

Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, USA — 1993–1996
 

Art Institute of Southern California, BFA, USA — 1995–1998

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

 

The Pavilion, Frogner Park, Oslo, Norway
 

Kjøsterudgården, Åsgårdstrand, Norway
 

Grevens Grund, Åsgårdstrand, Norway
 

St Olav’s Church, London, UK

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

 

Larnaca Biennale, Larnaca, Cyprus
 

Transcendentalia, St. Adalbert’s Church, WrocÅ‚aw, Poland
 

Gallery Laguna
 

Gallery DC-3, Norway
 

Castillo, Sabinillas, Spain
 

LA Art Club, Los Angeles, USA
 

London House, UK
 

Norden Farm Centre for the Arts, Maidenhead, UK

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SCHOLARSHIP

ACAD Scholarship

© 2023 Liv Ottersen, livingthreads.net

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