Micromutant V, detail Sculpture

Ellen Ringstad graduated from Bergen National Academy of the Arts, Fine arts department in 2012. She mainly works site-specifically and context-sensitively. Her performative installations are expressive and eclectlic. They often contain a participatory element, where smell, sound, temperature, texture, light, image, text, movement et cetera are symbiotic parts of the whole. Ringstad readily makes use of surplus materials, leftovers, waste, condemned buildings and the like and re-appropriates it. The material she gathers and transforms are physical explorations of death, life, cyclicity, essence, existence and transcendence. Ritual transformations like this draw parallells to alchemy and other esoteric and occult philosophy.