Karima Risk
Hinterland

Exhibition opening 25th / 14:00 The exhibition is part of the Heerz Tooya satellite programme and takes place on the second floor of the clock tower in the village of Vishovgrad.

In the exhibition Hinterland, we are presented with eight drawing sketches made by Karima Risk during her time living in Vishovgrad, Bulgaria. The motifs range from colourful creatures to silhouettes of multiple beings, forming a shadowy realm where figures appear to move in and out of reality. What emerges most strongly are perhaps the most ambiguous forms—figures that resist full recognition.

Presented in a former office space in the central square of Vishovgrad, the drawings are placed within an environment that still carries its former function. Risk’s artworks are framed in structures reminiscent of archival drawers, reinforcing a sense of fragments temporarily held rather than fully contained.

The title Hinterland (Хинтерланд) refers to the inland territory beyond a centre: a space that supports and conditions it while remaining outside its immediate visibility. Often understood in relation to a city or port, it describes a zone of movement and passage—where materials, bodies, and impressions circulate without fully settling. In this exhibition, the hinterland can be understood both as a physical context and as a perceptual condition within Risk’s drawings. Figures appear as if passing through layers of visibility, between emergence and disappearance, as if seen in transit rather than at rest.

The exhibition is not a reconstruction of a finished narrative, but an encounter with a set of traces—where drawing becomes a way of sensing what remains just beyond full recognition. - Kaare Ruud and Lars Nordby

Karima Risk (1977–2016), based between Oslo in Norway and Vishovgrad in Bulgaria, developed a practice working across video, drawing, and painting. Previous solo exhibitions include Galleri Bolin, Stockholm (Sweden); Trøndelag senter for Samtidskunst, Trondheim; Sandefjord Kunstforening, Sandefjord; and Galleri Blunk, Trondheim (Norway). Risks' work has also been shown in group exhibitions at Drammens Museum, Drammen; USF verftet, Bergen; Høstutstillingen, Oslo; LNM, Oslo; Babel, Trondheim (Norway), and Loop 05, Barcelona (Spain). Karima Risks works are acquired by notably Trondheim Kunstmuseum, Christian Ringnes private collection, NTNU, and Oslo Kommune, amongst others.