Image: Vibeke Tandberg, work from ‘De lever’ at Kode, Bergen. © Vibeke Tandberg/BONO
Kode is showing ‘De lever’, the largest exhibition to date devoted to Norwegian artist Vibeke Tandberg, at Stenersen in Bergen until 13 September 2026. The exhibition opened on 23 May, following a vernissage on Friday 22 May. The exhibition spans more than three decades, bringing together works from Tandberg’s breakthrough period in the 1990s with newly produced pieces.
Tandberg is regarded by Kode as one of the leading representatives of postmodern conceptual photography and a pioneer of digital photography as an art form. The exhibition marks a return to Bergen, where she began her career as a photography student at the Bergen Academy of Fine Arts. Her practice now extends across photography, film, sculpture, theatre, drama and fiction.
The presentation occupies both galleries at Stenersen, with a scenography designed to accommodate Tandberg’s sustained engagement with identity, performance and shifting personas. It includes early series such as ‘Brud’ (1993), in which the artist appeared in a wedding dress alongside 11 different men and published the images as wedding announcements in 23 Norwegian newspapers, and ‘Living Together’ (1996), where digital manipulation created the illusion that Tandberg was living with her own double.
Other works address the transformation of the artist’s face and body through staged roles. In ‘Faces’ (1998), Tandberg’s face merges with those of others to create fictional selves, while ‘Old Man Going Up and Down a Staircase’ (2003) presents the artist, heavily pregnant, as an older man wearing a latex mask and men’s clothing. Kode’s material describes these works as part of an artistic language shaped by staging and manipulation, in dialogue with figures including Hannah Wilke, Cindy Sherman and Tracey Emin.
The exhibition also moves into Tandberg’s more recent work, in which Kode identifies a more explicit political dimension and an interest in gothic traditions of shock and bodily distortion. A monumental installation, ‘Hestebarrikade’ (2024), is positioned outside the main entrance. The series ‘Echo’s Bones’ (2021), made during the Covid-19 pandemic, consists of distorted plaster casts of the artist’s head. Recent works include ‘Old Man Cowboy’ (2022–23) and the film ‘Post Americana’ (2026), created especially for the exhibition.
The title ‘De lever’ is borrowed from John Carpenter’s 1988 cult film ‘They Live’, which uses an alien invasion as an allegory for the neoliberal United States under Ronald Reagan. Kode says the exhibition’s new films likewise evoke a doomed America, including a dishevelled cowboy who collapses in an undefined landscape. The exhibition is curated by Lars Bang Larsen in collaboration with Kode curator Synnøve Vik and is accompanied by a bilingual Norwegian-English catalogue with contributions from Chris Kraus, Maria Moseng, Lars Bang Larsen, Fred Hansen and Gertrud Sandqvist.
Two related public programmes have been announced in collaboration with Bergen Public Library. A reading group and tour centred on Tandberg’s novel ‘Hestedagboken’ will take place at Stenersen on 19 August, while a free conversation between Tandberg and the American writer Chris Kraus is scheduled for 5 pm on 26 August at the Main Library. Kode has also scheduled a concert at Stenersen on 9 September, and lists ‘De lever’ as running through 13 September 2026.
