The artist

Cecilia G. Salinas holds a doctorate in social anthropology from the University of Oslo (UiO) in Norway. She is also educated at the art school Lomas de Zamora in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and has been a student at the Bruchion Art Institute under the direction of Jan Valentin Sæther.

Cecilia is interested in the intersection of art and anthropology in her research. During her fieldwork of the research project Private Lives, Cecilia created a series of digital collages that are part of the traveling exhibition 'ARTivisme'. The project is a collaboration with the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology, where Cecilia works closely with the curator Henrik Treimo and his team. Read more about Cecilia's research and publications here.

Regarding the collaboration with INSPIRE, Cecilia says: 'INSPIRE seems a great project that can carve out a space for people with similar concerns to meet and hopefully collaborate in connecting art and research methodologies'.

Selected works

ARTivisme (2022)

What happens when art and anthropology meet as to equal parts? ARTivisme is a collection of digital drawings and texts that sprung out of the research project 'Privatlivets grenser' [The boundaries of private life] at the Institute of Social Anthropology (UiO). The collages and the texts are part of a series created under Cecilia's ethnographic fieldwork among Norwegians with minority background in the art and culture sector. Between March and November 2021, she investigated how the research subjects used social media and their experience of being an artist in Norway. The subjects in the exhibition demonstrate a longing to belong to a place when racism, discrimination, and unequal treatment are part of their lived experience. The exhibition is supported by FrittOrd.

SÅR (2021)

In November 2021, Cecilia concluded an individual exhibition called 'SÅR'. The exhibition represents a 15-year artistic exploration on the topic of childhood and trauma, and artistic practice as a way to heal, transform and reconstitute. The word 'Sår' means both 'wound' and 'to sow' in Norwegian, and Cecilia engages these two separate meanings in the project. Trauma can corrupt us, but healing can turn wounds into building blocks.

Through a serie of 11 oil paintings and poems in Norwegian, English, and Spanish by well-known poets, writers, and herself, se seeks to raise awareness about childhood and trauma. It consists of digital collages that circulate around themes of representation, identity and belonging. The purpose of 'SÅR' is to create a space for reflection on individual and collective levels and to contribute to public debates on childcare policy.

Read more

• Cecilia Salinas in Anthropology News
• A conversation about 'ARTivisme' (in Norwegian)
• Cecilia Salinas' 'Artist of the Month' article on the INSPIRE website