Coordinates of Within – solo
February 21 – April 4, 2026

Trine Søndergaard, Coordinates 55.98348,1231588, 2024

Solo exhibition: Trine Søndergaard: Coordinates of Within at Snø Galleri, Oslo

Snø Galleri presents Coordinates of Within, the first solo exhibition in Norway by Danish artist Trine Søndergaard. The exhibition brings together works that reflect on history and its presence in our time. In Søndergaard’s works, there is a quiet tension between past and present.

Her works draw attention to stories that are hidden, forgotten, or difficult to put into words. From the calm presence of glacial boulders left by the Ice Age to the cultural meanings carried in nineteenth-century women’s headwear, and into contemporary settings, each image enters into a gentle conversation with history.

In Coordinates, Søndergaard photographs large rocks scattered across Danish forests. These stones, formed and carried by ancient ice, stand quietly in the landscape — steady, patient, and unchanged.

During the last ice age, which ended 10,700 years ago, large rocks began to descend with the ice from the mountains of Norway and Sweden to the otherwise flat terrain of Denmark. An ice shield over the Scandinavian highlands, which had developed during the cold climate of the Ice Age, moved towards lower regions and brought with it clay, sand, gravel, pebbles and boulders, which melted free and shaped the Danish landscape. The monumental rocks have attracted the attention of people throughout centuries, and myths and folklore arose in the attempt to explain their presence in the landscape. Søndergaard’s images of the giant rocks hidden in the forests reproduce a physical presence so enormous that they cannot possibly be moved. Søndergaard utilizes the rocks as metaphors for both nature’s and humanity’s challenges, which occasionally require that one must tread new paths.

In Stille vand, Trine Søndergaard has collected soil from various geographical locations that have a personal meaning for her and mixed it with water. Through these works, the artist examines the connection to places and origin.

In the series Hovedtøj we see individual teenage girls wearing their own clothes, but also an older piece of clothing – a bonnet, collar or fabric from a previous century. The historical embroideries and textiles have all taken much more time, knowledge and skill to make than the young women’s contemporary, mass-produced garments. The historical garments represent a hidden or forgotten story connected to the female realm of experience. The works thus create a link between the past and the present, uniting different bodies, clothing and lives, and allowing women – the dead and the living – to connect across generations and time.

Another theme running through Søndergaard’s series is stillness — a sense of quiet beneath the noise of the world.

The exhibition opens on February 21 and continues through April 4, 2026.

Opening: February 21, 14:00-16:00.