Anne-Karin Furunes Norwegian, b. 1961

Anne-Karin Furunes creates haunting large-scale paintings of faces and landscapes by perforating the surface of black or white canvas or unpainted aluminum with hundreds of hand-made holes. Her portraits are taken from photographs in a Swedish archive devoted to the now-discredited notion of categorizing people by race, ethnicity, and mental capacity. Furunes’ work is concerned with issues relating to memory, history, and the nature of photographic reality.

Furunes is one of the most successful Norwegian artists on the international scene. She created a series of monumental public artworks in Norway, and has also been on show in solo exhibitions in several European countries, Canada, Australia, and the United States.