Thora Dolven Balke (b.1982, Oslo) was educated at Fata Morgana Photographic School, Denmark; Bergen and Oslo Art Academy in Norway and Mountain School of Art in Los Angeles. Her work has been a part of exhibitions such as The Collectors, Danish and Nordic Pavilions, 53rd Venice Biennale (2009); Lights On—Norwegian Contemporary Art, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo (2008) and the Biennale of Jafre, Catalonia, Spain (2009). Recent exhibitions include Mind moves with matter, body blends into space, Kunsthall Trondheim (2019); INNLAND, Centre de Art Contemporaine, Tours (2017); The Young Lions, Preus Fotomuseum, Oslo (2017) and solo exhibitions False Spring, Lydgalleriet, Bergen (2020); FLOW, Cavalo, Rio de Janeiro and MELK, Oslo (2019) and All that breathes conspires, UKS and Ultimafestival, Oslo (2017). Dolven Balke was one of two curators of the biennale Lofoten International Art Festival – LIAF – in 2011 and co-funded and programmed the artist-run space REKORD in Oslo from 2006 to 2010. In 2016 she was a participant in the Capacete programme in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and since lives and works between there and Oslo, Norway.

A line through Thora Dolven Balke’s work could be how humans act in precarious situations, and how those actions are inscribed on their surroundings. She works in the studio next to a more documentary approach with sound, film and photography - with materials made to support or augment the body directly via technology or metaphorically as sculptural counterparts, or aids to the photographs, films and sound works. The cameras and recording-devices she uses act as prosthetics, dictating both her distance to the subject and the resulting artifacts. This idea of the prosthetic, or the aid, is something that recurs throughout Dolven Balke’s works. She uses materials that are made to support, comfort, examine or increase the abilities of the body. Dolven Balke is interested in the language we use to describe experiences that seem impossible, although they are perhaps the most real of all; experiences related to your own fragility, to time, to community, to self-preservation.