Ingrid Eggen (b. 1979, Norway) lives and works in Oslo. She holds a BA from Oslo National Academy of the Arts (Institute for color) and Konstfack, University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. She undertook an independent project in artistic research for 6 months at the Akademin Valand, School of Photography in Gothenburg.
Eggen’s work focuses on non-verbal communication and bodily symbolism, with a particular interest in the involuntary and instinctive aspects of the body – those often seen as irrational, as reflexes and spontaneous reactions. Through performative methods, Eggen explores movements that are not yet deeply shaped by cultural norms, and seeks to contribute to the creation of new physical languages and expressions that move beyond the optimized and regulated body. By consistently distorting and shifting the boundaries of the body, her practice aims to raise psychological and existential questions, while generating new bodily states in response to societal structures and transformations.
Eggen has exhibited at venues such as Henie Onstad Art Center, Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology, Haugar Vestfold Artmuseum, Lillehammer Art Museum, Kunstnerforbundet, gallery 1857, Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City and Ulterior Gallery, New York.
Recent exhibitions include “Bebo” Wergelandshaugen, Eidsvoll (2024), “skinvelop” Melk, Oslo (2023), FUTURE FAIR 2022 atChelsea Industrial, New York, TRUST - f/ stop - 9. Festival fur Fotografie Leipzig (2021), “grapple grasp” galleri MELK (2021), Oslo Negativ (2021), Galleri Noplace, Oslo (2020), Fotografihuset, Sukkerbiten (2020), Sandefjord kunstforening (2020), and New Visions - the Henie Onstad Triennale for Photography and New Media, The Henie Onstad Art Center (2020). Her work are in several private and public collections such as The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, The National Museum in Oslo, The Henie Onstad art collection, Equinor Art Programme, Møllersamlingen and Oslo kommunes art collection.
MELK is excited to present join joints, Ingrid Eggen's fourth solo exhibition at MELK. We hope to see you at Elisenbergveien 7 from 18.00–21.00 on Thursday, August 14.
The exhibition “join joints” features two new photographic series, “limbits" and “pedknots”.
Inspired by the principles of biomimetics, Eggen examines how organisms and ecosystems have developed clever, innovative solutions to problems through evolution and adaptation, and how the human body might be transformed in response to future changes. The bionic, in this context, is understood as a potential vocabulary for the body’s affective intelligence: a language of forms, growths, connections and adjustments that arise in response to these changes; a body that acquires traits from other organisms and systems—grasping, sensory-expanding, orienting.
Through manipulated silhouettes, fragmented forms, and a lighting strategy that seeks to draw out and expand the body's contours, Eggen explores anatomy as a fluid, rather than fixed, structure—one shaped by movement and response.
Anatomical boundaries are dismantled and reassembled, not in order to return to the body as we know it, but to evoke a different kind of corporeality—a new bodily state shaped by the lived experience of the affective body.
These works are part of a long-term process aimed at creating an alternative, bodily and cultural-historical atlas, based on the experiential body’s capacity for knowledge, expression, and development. Here, movement, tension, response and affect are not merely expressions, but the structure itself.
The exhibition is accompanied by a literary text written by Ruby Paloma. A full version of the text is available at the bottom of this page.
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My toes mirror my fingers—it’s the middle toe that’s the longest, not the second toe. It’s strange, because I only use my feet for walking, yet they look more like hands, as if they’re stuck in an earlier stage of evolution …
… M moves her arms behind her, letting her fingertips sink into the sand, just beyond the collar of the jacket she’s sitting on. Her shoulder muscles shift underneath her T-shirt—two lean, elongated shapes that fold together at her upper back. When I see M like this, fragmented, as separate regions detached from the rest of her body, entirely new shapes begin to emerge. Those two shapes on her back, rising under the fabric, look like rocks at the water’s edge, like contours on a map. She lifts her right hand in front of her. It trembles slightly. Sand clings to the hollows between her fingers—valleys dusted in grains. She brings her left hand to meet the right and rubs them together, the way she often does when she speaks. …
… I believe she rubs her hands together while saying all these things to feel her edges—because all the words pouring out of her erase the very edges she’s trying to find— and now she’s doing it, without speaking.
(Excerpts from Ruby Paloma’s text)
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