The goal of the interdisciplinary project Matter, Gesture, and Soul is to explore how contemporary art intersects with archaeology. The project, led by Geir Harald Samuelsen, has created a collaborative environment where artistic, poetic and scientific expressions meet and respond to prehistoric “art”.
One of the project’s meeting points is the exhibition “Dig it Up and Put It in a Bag” at the University Museum of Bergen in the autumn 2021, with a publication to follow. The exhibit gives an insight into how art and archaeology offer different standpoints and approaches in the meeting with material from the past: prehistoric symbols and stone engravings at Fontainebleau (France), cave paintings from South Africa, the Neolithic tomb Newgrange in Ireland and the abalone shell’s practical and mythical significance to our ancestors. It deals with the way shapes and traces are recurring, how we remember and how the past continuously changes character as the position we view it from is constantly changing.