Interview with Ingvild Melberg Eikeland
Open Studios Stavanger (OSS) took place on 26-27 September, when artists in Stavanger and Sandnes opened their studios to the public. In connection with the event, we have spoken with a selection of artists about their practice.
One of them is Ingvild Melberg Eikeland. She works across material-based and digital media, from sculptures in wood and natural rubber to video, sound and language models. Her studio is at Tou Atelierhus.
Ingvild Melberg Eikeland (b. 1989) holds a master’s degree in fine art from Umeå Academy of Fine Arts (2019) and a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Stavanger (2023). She has exhibited at venues including Studija Space in Kuldīga, Rogaland Kunstsenter, Galleri Blunk in Trondheim, Stavanger Art Museum, Andersson/Sandström in Stockholm, Galleri Punkt in Oslo, Photoworks in Glasgow and UNM Art Museum in New Mexico.
This summer she had a residency at Studija Space in Kuldīga, Latvia, where she developed the video Par pēdējo lapu (2026). Several of her video works, including UMWELT (2025), are on Vimeo.
What inspired you to become an artist?
In primary school I really loved everything to do with drawing and crafts, and I was probably more motivated to work on those kinds of tasks than on the other school subjects.
My way into art as an adult was through studying photography, where after completing a bachelor’s degree I felt that I could not quite develop my ideas by working only with photography and video. I therefore went on to study for a master’s in fine art in Umeå, with the aim of trying out as many media as possible, something I now realize I have probably not quite managed to stop doing. I think art has become a way of moving into other fields that interest me, but that I may have thought were out of reach for me. Since I do a lot of research and am interested in theoretical perspectives, I recently completed a bachelor’s degree in sociology, which has given me a better foundation for the theoretical and research-based part of my practice. Even though part of me would like to continue studying social science, I still feel that you are much freer when you work in the art field. In a way, art projects become a kind of alibi for exploring different fields and special interests without academic frameworks, or consequences for misunderstanding or getting hung up on the “wrong” details. In a way, it is precisely these hang-ups and misinterpretations that are the most interesting for me to explore, and that form the basis for how my projects develop.
What themes or ideas do you explore in your art?
In my art I am interested in exploring how different structures and ideologies are shaped and maintained through culture and knowledge production. I am interested in how different elements can be taken out of one field and worked through other ways of thinking that may at first seem counterintuitive. The aim is not to prove or disprove anything, but to examine different ideas without separating them or ranking them. One example is an ongoing project where I collected seismic data from different mountains and rock formations, which I will try to interpret as if they were biometric health data from a smartwatch. I am very interested in themes related to non-human perspectives, but often find that the human perspective is not something you can detach yourself from. I therefore find it more interesting to examine what can emerge from your own perspective when you use the “wrong” frameworks of interpretation and methods of measurement.
How does the process around an artwork or new project typically begin?
I have a lot of interests, at times quite divergent ones, and ideas for projects often come when I find connections or threads between different topics that interest me. In the visual part of my work I also like to make archives of objects that look alike, but whose meaning is shaped by context and function. Many of the projects I am working on now can in a way be traced back to a project where I documented birdwatchers. I was at a bird ringing station where they had a loudspeaker placed by the net they catch the birds in, playing lure calls from different bird species to lead them into the net. Behind a fence on the other side of this loudspeaker was a field that the landowner could no longer use, because the area was protected during the nesting season. The owner of this field had therefore also put up a loudspeaker, but in protest, and it played scare sounds to chase the birds away. This memory is one I often come back to in my work, as it illustrates how something that looks like the same “thing” from the outside can often be completely different depending on its purpose. This idea of two different things that look alike from the outside, but are used either to lure or to scare away, is something I still return to in my work. One example is a work I have made that copies the design of sensory and calming aids, where one of the works is a pillow shaped like a body you are meant to hold, but which I make in materials that are too hard and uncomfortable to offer any kind of comfort.
Which materials and techniques do you most enjoy working with?
I work with many different materials, where the material reflects the themes I am working with in a project. Many of the materials I use are common and easy to get hold of, but most often connected to consumer goods and industrial production. In my latest works I explore questions around extraction, appropriation and the fetishization of nature in self-care and wellness, and I made works in wood and natural rubber. I make most of the installation elements and sculptures by hand myself, because I prefer to explore how the material can be used, and to have control over my own artistic production. Often I make an object in one material and then cast and reproduce it in another. I often find it interesting to explore how a form translates when it is recreated in other materials and media.
What does a typical day in your studio look like?
A working day in my studio is rarely like the next, so the only thing I can call typical is probably that there is not much repetition or routine. I can partly blame this on the fact that I work with many different kinds of media, both material-based and digital.
One day I might be in the studio from early morning until late in the evening to finish a wooden sculpture, while the next day might be spent on research in the form of studying YouTube videos that show how rubber gloves are made. I also work with video, sound, text and programming language models, where the digital production is an integral part of the projects I work on. The most consistent thing is probably that I spend a lot of time on research and trying things out. And of course a lot of time also goes into writing applications and project descriptions.
