Karolin Tampere is an artist and curator based in Romsa/Tromsø, Sápmi/Norway with a particular interest in collaborative, cross disciplinary, long term socially engaged art practices, sound, music and listening. Currently she is a PhD Research fellow in Curatorial practice at Tromsø Art Academy, UiT and KMD, Faculty of Fine Art, Bergen, Norway. Karolin´s curatorial practice has dealt with a wide range of topics fueled by her interests including rural and urban gentrification, art and public realm, socially engaged art and ecology and the other-than-human.

Since 2004 she has regularly contributed to Sørfinnset skole/the nord land initiated by artists Geir Tore Holm and Søssa Jørgensen. This is a contemporary art project based on a place specific, socially engaged learning process, devoted to collective living, making and thinking. The collective has an emphasis on dialogue, long term commitment and an experimental form of value production which connects different traditions and experiences. It is a forever lasting work started in 2003, with focus on relationships with nature, knowledge exchange and small-scale architecture in a broad understanding of aesthetics and ecological realisms.

Together with Åse Løvgren their ongoing collaboration Rakett - a mobile platform for multivocal exchange through collaborative and investigative curatorial and artistic projects - was initiated in 2003. From 2013 and partly through 2014 she was serving as director of Konsthall C in Stockholm and collaboratively with Anna Ahlstrand and akcg, transformed the directorship of the institution into a collective named the Work Group/Arbetslaget.

In 2017-2022 she served as curator at North Norwegian Art Centre, realizing context spesific projects with artists and communities across the whole region of Sápmi/Northern Norway. She also co-curated Lofoten Sound Art Symposium (with Svein Ingvoll Pedersen) and LIAF2019 Lofoten International Art Festival (with Hilde Mehti, Torill Østby Håland and Neal Cahoon).

From 2011-2023 she was part of Ensayos – a collective research practice centered on de-extinction, multispecies dialogues, coastal health and peatland protection. Initiated on the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego in 2010, Ensayos (meaning “inquiries”, “essays” or “rehearsals” in English) first focused solely on the ecopolitical issues impacting the Fuegian archipelago and its inhabitants–past and present, human and nonhuman. Now, other archipelagos have come into view, with research “pods” growing in Norway, New York and Australia. The mission of Ensayos is to do eco-cultural conservation work in Tierra del Fuego and other archipelagos through collaborative art, science and community projects in partnership with existing ecological and cultural conservation initiatives. On the main isle of Tierra del Fuego, WCS Parque Karukinka, Caleta María, and Hach Saye are foundational collaborators. In 2022 Ensayos presented «The Gift» as a creative collaborator part of «TURBA TOL HOL HOL TOL» collective project led by curator Camila Marambio at the Chilean Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale. Ensayos collaborators were working with “pods” of artists and ecologists to explore the ecology and culture of peatlands local to their regions. The three groups conjured gifts of scent from international peatlands that contributed to the multisensory experience of the pavilion in Venice.

Currently Karolin is working on the project Down in the Bog – Thinking with Peatlands. A three chapter research project led by an ambition to create cross-pollinating meeting grounds for art, natural science, environmental issues and a public. The three chapters project emphasizes the sharing and embodying of knowledge and awareness to create attention towards the need for increased care for peatland areas, locally, nationally and internationally. Practically and conceptually, the topic of peatlands act as a guiding map and compass to learn about historical, cultural and contemporary and geopolitical changes in the environments in Sápmi / Northern Norway, Estonia and other selected places internationally. Throughout the two group exhibitions Down in the Bog: Hibernation (Romssa Dáiddasiida / Tromsø Kunstforening) and Down in the Bog – Sporulation (EKKM - Estonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Tallinn) followed by Thinking with Peatlands symposium (co-curated with Camilla Fagerli and Romssa Dáiddasiida / Tromsø Kunstforening continued by the exhibition Reverberations which served as framework for an extensive education programlead by educators Kristin Risan and Mathilde Stubmark, where local school youth lent from the ecosystem of peatlands as a prism for reflecting, sharing, learning and collaboration.

Image by Piia rabe