The Aesthetic and Material Cost of Development

Set against the industrial backdrop of Nyhavna, the Trondheim Biennial 2026 activates public space with temporary projects that highlight the local art scene within an area that is being redefined by rapid development. Titled Horisonter til salgs, or Horizons for Sale, it draws inspiration from Norwegian architect Christian Norberg-Schulz’s concept of the “loss of place.” It is a sprawling assembly of temporary outdoor projects, performances, and a group exhibition featuring 25 artists living and working in Trøndelag.

Approaching the group exhibition at Skur 2, there is significantly more commotion at Nyhavna than usual. The large warehouse garage door stands wide open, revealing a cavern of large-scale installations. Just outside, artists Monika Raźny and Mateusz Pitala are baking bread, welcoming the audience to the biennial’s opening day. Their performance, Bread and Salt, fosters a gathering space centered on the ancient ritual of breaking bread. Raźny and Pitala take turns tending a handmade clay oven, offering fresh rounds of bread to participants waiting behind a long wooden table holding piles of salt. From the artists’ hands directly to the audience, a warm welcome is offered — a gift deeply appreciated in the cold, rainy weather.

Inside the warehouse, the raw architecture is left exposed; we are not in a white cube gallery, but at the center of industry. To the right, television screens sit atop a pile of broken concrete and twisting rebar. To the left, a styrofoam architectural mockup of Nyhavna imagines its developed future. As the wind enters the warehouse, the tall styrofoam skyscrapers sway; whether intentional or not, it reads as a poetic commentary on the inherent instability of urban development. Circling Petter Buhagen’s work, Monument til minne om fjordutsikt og det felles eide, it feels like an eerie warning. A recreation of the fjord’s waters winds through the cityscape, visible only from specific vantage points — a direct, stinging link to the biennial’s title.

The scale of the warehouse is an opportunity that most artists here have leveraged. Through industrial material choices — steel sculptural installations, a column of dyed t-shirts, commercial-grade fabric banners — many works engage in a direct dialogue with various means of production. This theme spills outdoors across Nyhavna. On the rocks near the water, Ellen Sofie Griegel’s Evig gjenkomst — a tangle of steel piping — acts as a physical drawing in space. It is a monument to the industrial, reminding us of a history that may soon be erased.

Against the back of Skur 2 sits a wooden structure weighted down by sandbags. Two hill-like curves rise from the planks, topped with the word “COMMUNITY” rendered in steel, hot-dog-shaped letters. While steeped in a playful aesthetic, the work evokes little joy. Its isolated placement, tucked away, feels like a potential critique of the lack of trust in community involvement in the upcoming development. However, the use of sandbags and its location pulls me away from the work’s intent. Without a map, one might assume this was a discarded project waiting for disposal. Perhaps that is the artist’s point: that community desires are often placed in the wastebin by developers, but here, the execution feels dangerously close to what it mimics.

On the corner of Maskinistgata, Kåre Frang utilizes the commercial billboard, another signature of industry, to display a painting of an arctic landscape. Two holes are cut out of the image, inviting passersby to stick their faces through, amusement-park style, to «consume» the climate crisis. Formally, however, the work falters. The painting is incredibly flat, lacking the level of technique seen elsewhere in the biennial. While the intention to highlight our complicity in environmental collapse is urgent, the execution feels uninspired, failing to command the attention such a significant subject requires.

Further down the road, I follow the map on a scavenger hunt of sorts, finally discovering the large organic form of rebar, mesh, and concrete by Kåre Grundvåg. Titled En dårlig idé, it sits as a monument to rejected ideas, though its nearly camouflaged presence struggles to compete with the monumental Dora bunker looming just across from it. While the sculpture is itself a static structure, it is intended to develop over the course of the biennial, eventually transforming into a meeting point for the residents of Svartlamon and Nyhavna. While a noble goal for a site-specific work, its intentions remain invisible without a clear didactic explanation to inform those passing by. Nearby, floating in the water, is Signe Solberg’s Flokkdyr. Perhaps too reminiscent of Monica Bonvicini’s Hun Ligger in the Oslofjord, this smaller metal sculpture moves with the current but remains tied to the dock. Its geometric peaks resemble sinking icebergs, visually drowning beneath the new horizons yet to be built around them.

The most jarringly effective intervention is John Huntington’s Velkommen til skrikehullet. Disguised as a standard, walled-off construction site, the fabric banners invite us to scream into the void of a hole dug into the sidewalk. Pedestrians pass by, paying no mind to what they assume is just another site of development. It is a brilliant bit of mimesis that captures the mounting tension in the area. As I walk from Skur 2 to this «screaming hole,» I am actively thinking of how such developments destabilize communities. The pattern is one I have witnessed before in various cities I’ve lived in abroad: First, artists are brought in to nurture culture; next, Mondrian-esque condos are built and sold to the highest bidders. Just steps away, Svartlamon stands in protest of the expanded Bane NOR tracks that will displace its residents and community spaces. I am left to wonder if this biennial inadvertently contributes to the very gentrification it critiques.

On Sunday morning, I head toward Bakkaunet klebersteinbrudd for one of six performance walks titled Til Jordkroppen og Bekken by Guri Simone Øveraas. I stand among a group of sixteen people, waiting by the road. Three women walk out from a nearby house, connected by a large blue sheer fabric that drapes over their shoulders like a cloak. We are offered a small pamphlet, and Øveraas opens the performance by singing Bekken syng by Jan-Magnus Bruheim. Our walk begins down the hill in a procession, following along the paths of a stream that now lies hidden underneath the concrete. Every once in a while, the three performers slow down to a stop and hand off a small object. The first, a golden ring, makes its way around everyone’s hands before the walk continues.

As we walk, bells jingle in the hand of one of the performers. Sewn into their connecting fabric are small pockets that hold bird feathers, twigs, and stones – gifts carried by the water. We, the participants, become part of the stream as we carry these objects for the duration of the walk: a mossy nest with a golf ball, a small twig, the dried claw of a crab leg. We cross roads and property lines, ignoring human-made laws and meeting cats and birds who perhaps also carry memories of these hidden streams. As we land in Svartlamon, the three performers hum in unison. They climb up a ladder and over the fence, ignoring these unnecessary boundary lines, and invite us all for cake and a tea made with birch and chaga.

I am left thinking of what more we will lose to industry. These streams that now lie underground were once habitats feeding life that has been forced to leave. With the Nyhavna development plan, as the title of the biennial suggests, there’s much more at stake than just a view. While the focus on cultural integration sounds positive, it risks turning art into a mere marketing tool for displacement. Yet, Horizons for Sale succeeds precisely because it refuses to ignore this tension. By working directly with the materiality and friction of urban development, the biennial successfully activates Nyhavna as a site of critical reflection rather than just a backdrop. However, in its commitment to industrial materiality, at times the outdoor artworks become so cohesive with their surroundings that they start to fade into the environment and become indistinguishable from the urban scenery.

For the biennial format to truly serve the neighborhood in the long term, it must move beyond temporary interventions and deeper into sustained community engagement. While the performances and group exhibition effectively highlight the area’s “loss of place,” future iterations could benefit from more permanent fixtures of engagement that live beyond the biennial’s timeframe. As this decades-long process begins to shape the city, we must ensure that development remains in service of the people who inhabit these spaces, and not just the corporations selling the view.

Main photo: Signe Solberg, Trondheim Biennial 2026, Photo: Monica Svorstøl

Trondheim Biennial 2026
2th–30th of May
Nyhavna

The architecture program of the Trondheim Biennial will be covered in an upcoming text.

Note: Per Kristian Nygård, who is one of the two founders of the Trondheim Biennial, is chairman of the board of ArtScene Trondheim.