Commissioned by the Studio Museum in Harlem to create a site-informed work for its terrace staircase, Camille Norment presents Untitled (heliotrope), a sculptural and sound installation inspired by contemporary and historical migration. Handwoven by the artist herself, brass wires frame brass tubes of varying lengths and diameters; the resulting shape recalls both a pipe organ and a raft. The placement of Norment’s work in the Studio Museum—along the wall of a passageway with a view toward the South—engages with diasporic migratory patterns from North to South and South to North caused by numerous sociopolitical, environmental, and cultural concerns. Untitled (heliotrope) positions “social heliotropism”—the orientation toward perceived sources of growth and care during difficult circumstances, like sunflowers turning to the sun—as a framework to consider migration. As the installation suggests, the search for harmony amid dissonance is integral to the diasporic experience.
Camille Norment (b. 1970, Silver Spring, Maryland; lives and works in Oslo, Norway) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in sound but extends across drawing, installation, performance, sculpture, and video. In 1992 she received her BA in comparative literature and art history from the University of Michigan, and an MFA and an MA in interactive telecommunications from New York University in 1994 and 1998, respectively. From 1994 to 1995, she attended the Whitney Independent Study Program. Norment’s work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at Oslo Kunstforening, Norway; the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago; and Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin. She has performed at institutions including the Munch Museum, Oslo, in 2021; the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, with Hamid Drake, in 2019; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, with Craig Taborn, in 2019. Her discography includes Toll (2011) and the soundtrack and special edition LP for the film The Haunted (2017/20). Norment represented Norway at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 and has participated in the Kochi-Muziris, Montreal, Lyon, and Thailand biennials. She currently serves as Prorector of Research at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.
Studio Museum in Harlem