Oda Iselin Sorcha Sonderland

Oda Iselin Sønderland (b.1996 in Oslo) is a Norwegian/Irish artist currently living and working in London. She works mainly with watercolor paintings and recently sculpture, creating figurative work that draws in personal life experiences together with elements and shared stories from her own and other cultures, ranging from magical creatures to characters with an appearance that alludes to Japanese anime. The structure of her work often plays with frames and an image within an image, constructing an inside versus and outside. This connects to the recurring topic of a split self and opposing forces that often occur in the work. Sønderland holds a BA in Graphic Design and Illustration from The National Academy of Art in Oslo, and is graduating the summer 2022 with an MA in Painting from The Royal College of Art in London. Her previous shows include the solo exhibitions Magical Girl (2019) with Gallery Golsa in Oslo and Krokus (2022) with Nevven Gallery in Gothenburg, as well as the participation in the group shows Radiant Immensity (2020) with Projet Pangee in Montreal, Body Snatchers (2021) with Like a Little Disaster in Polignano a Mare and Suspended Disbelief (2021) with Arsenal Contemporary in Toronto.

I think a lot about dreams and what they are. There are various theories of why we dream, but we have yet to come to an agreed upon conclusion. I believe they’re experiments. Like a sponge, our brain is constantly absorbing information, and it’s quite good at categorizing most of it. But categories can become restrictive: they are never exactly right, as in truth every notion is fluid and seeps through the cracks of its borders. Life needs space to breathe. Dreams give the brain a boundless space, allowing it to knock down those defining frames and see connections between things that we don’t think belong together. As we dream, we are walking through a world constructed out of memories and information, chosen in the moment with no plan or pre-determined concept. Thoughts and memories are part of a huge network within the brain, one leading to another at high speed. That’s why dreams can be so confusing and unexpected, our brains don’t navigate through folders like a computer, they’re vast forests with roots and branches sprouting in every direction. Reality feels pristine and clear, graspable and sensible. Fantasies and dreams seem more fluid, like the boundaries between things are dissolving, they seep into each other, and we do not have the same urge to make sense of things. Dreams are disguised as reality, while the reality we know is forgotten. When I create the world in my art, it is rather somewhere in between the physical reality and my own imagination, it’s a liminal space. Through creation, I open up a space between the spaces, the frame that separates reality from fantasy becomes a place of its own. Here, the logical mind and the dream state are allowed to interact, they become playmates. Like two opposing forces, they’re constantly pushing and pulling each other in order to keep the balance. Together they work to draw in the chaotic forces of the world in order to create a narrative, a structure; a comprehensible chaos.