Lofoten Poems – Visions from the Deep North, the solo exhibition by Norwegian artist Yngve Henriksen, opens at Fondazione Pastificio Cerere in Rome on 14 May 2026, and will be open to the public from 15 May to 10 July 2026. Curated by Alessandra Mammì and presented under the patronage of the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Italy, the exhibition brings together works connected to Henriksen’s long relationship with the Lofoten archipelago and the visual experience of northern territories.
Born in Svolvær in 1965 and based in the Lofoten Islands, Henriksen has developed a practice rooted in the origins, atmosphere and perceptual intensity of the North. The exhibition presents paintings of different scales and periods, drawings on paper, and more intimate works, alongside books, records, small mementos, notes, photographs and notebooks arranged in display cases like a secret wunderkammer. A video made with Kjell Ove Storvik follows the artist between his studio and the surrounding landscape, revealing his long relationship with these extreme environments.
Henriksen’s visual language exists on a threshold between figuration and abstraction. His works do not simply describe landscape; they absorb it through fragments, traces, memory and unstable atmospheres. The North is not presented as a postcard image or romantic geography, but as an internal and physical territory shaped by light, darkness, distance, silence and lived experience.
In the Lofoten archipelago, extreme temperatures, the stark alternation of light and darkness, and the disproportion between fragile human structures and monumental rock formations become part of Henriksen’s visual world. His paintings seem to emerge from this tension: between presence and disappearance, observation and memory, surface and depth.
Materiality plays a central role in this process. Through layered surfaces, traces of gesture and the slow temporality of painting, Henriksen transforms personal impressions into visual structures. His work suggests that memory is not fixed, but constantly reworked through time, matter and perception.
Presented in Rome, Lofoten Poems – Visions from the Deep North creates a dialogue between Nordic and Mediterranean contexts. Yet the exhibition avoids transforming the North into exotic distance. Instead, it offers a more intimate and complex encounter with northern territory, where landscape becomes both a physical environment and a mental space.
Beyond the exhibition itself, Lofoten Poems also opens a broader reflection on adaptation to extreme environments, the fragility of ecosystems, cultural memory and the role of art in shaping future iconographies.
As part of the public programme, on 15 May 2026 at 5 pm, Crossing Light and Darkness. Dialogues between Science and Art will take place at the Central Library “Guglielmo Marconi” – CNR in Rome. The event will bring Yngve Henriksen into conversation with Cristina Marras, Chiara Ripa and Vittorio Tulli, expanding the exhibition into a dialogue between artistic research, scientific observation and Arctic experience.
What ultimately emerges from Lofoten Poems is not simply a representation of Northern Norway, but a more unstable and internal experience of territory itself. Henriksen does not offer the Arctic as image. He offers its remaining traces.
Conversation with Yngve Henriksen
Nordrom Kunst
In many of your works, landscape never appears as direct representation, but rather as fragments, atmospheres, traces and perceptual tensions. How do memory, distance and lived experience influence the way Northern territory emerges within your practice?
Yngve Henriksen
I was born and raised in the north, on the Lofoten islands. I had a strong feeling for the landscape as a child, and felt connected to it. I have always referred to the landscape as my main source in my practice as a visual artist. It includes both a physical and a mental landscape. It’s about what you see and don’t see.
Memory is an important part of my practice. So is distance and lived experience. Everything melts together and becomes your research base. There’s always a past and a present.
Nordrom Kunst
Your works often seem suspended between appearance and disappearance, where surfaces feel fragile, weathered and almost affected by environmental conditions. How important are materiality, erosion and physical process within your understanding of painting?
Yngve Henriksen
Materiality, erosion and process are important for an always ongoing process to me as a painter. I work a lot with layering up my canvases over time. As I work with oil on canvas it’s a process of patience waiting for the colors to dry to be able to do the next layering.
Nordrom Kunst
Lofoten Poems – Visions from the Deep North marks an important presentation of your work in Rome at Fondazione Pastificio Cerere. What does it mean for you to bring these atmospheres, memories and Northern perceptions into a Mediterranean and Roman cultural context? Was there something particularly significant that led this exhibition toward Rome?
Yngve Henriksen
When I got the invitation from Fondazione Pastificio Cerere I felt honored and challenged at the same time. It is a fantastic opportunity to do a big solo exhibition in Rome, and to reach out to a new audience.
Nordrom Kunst would like to thank the press office of Fondazione Pastificio Cerere for the materials and support provided for this publication.
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