Performance and public program: spring–fall 2026

Culture comes from the Latin “colere”—to till, to cultivate soil. To be a companion is to share bread—“com”, together; “panis”, bread. The roots of the art we show to one another have always been tangled up with what we grow, what we prepare, and what we consume in each other's presence.

Kunsthall Trondheim's spring–fall 2026 performance and public program continues our annual curatorial inquiry into the norms and systems that govern inclusion and exclusion, bringing artists and communities together around questions of what gets nourished and what gets suppressed in bodies, languages, histories, and streets. Across lecture-performances, public interventions, communal dinners, and shared readings, it follows the politics of food, the intimacy of shared language, and the persistence of people and cultures.

Performances

June 12: Arijit Bhattacharyya—How Political is (y)our Curry?
Join Arijit Bhattacharyya in a gastronomic lecture-performance tracing the politics of food in India from colonialism to the present. Served alongside beef and potato jhol with rice, the artist examines how cuisine becomes a site for articulating and disarticulating power—from neo-colonial structures and failed decolonization to the ethnonationalist violence shaping contemporary Indian culture.

September 11: Pilvi Takala—The Pin
"Can you keep a secret?" Extending from Pilvi Takala’s earlier exhibition Breaking Ranks at Kunsthall Trondheim, the artist’s interventionist performance The Pin takes over Trondheim's main city square, where performers are hiding in plain sight and waiting to draw you into something you'll have to keep to yourself.

September 25: Sarah Kazmi—Visning(s)
This research-based performance-lecture follows the nomadic passage of Norwegian sailors and migrants through Liverpool, London, and beyond—tracing their journey to North America through oral histories, archives, and borrowed food practices.

October 3: Ania Nowak—Future Tongues
Departing from the Tower of Babel and the 1982 errotic science fiction film Café Flesh — in which a nuclear apocalypse splits humanity into the sex-positive few, forced to perform, and the sex-negative many, compelled to watch—Nowak's performance speculates on the future of human communication. In Future Tongues, intimacy—its pleasure and its discomfort—is treated as an endangered language: a form of embodied exchange increasingly out of place in a digital culture shaped by AI and authoritarian politics.

How Political is (y)our Curry?, Visning(s), and Future Tongues are co-produced with Propellen Theatre, a membership organization in Trondheim that works to promote and create new, Norwegian performing arts.

Block party

August 29: Jelsen Lee Innocent
Innocent's summer exhibition at Kunsthall Trondheim, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, traces how colonialism and debt continue to shape the Haitian lived experience. Extending that spirit outward, the institution takes to the street for a block party featuring DJ sets, film screenings, and discursive programs as well as catering by Haitian-American chef John Belizaire, of John B’s BBQ Creole and Caribbean Food in Hamar, Norway. As the exhibition positions Haiti as a living site of endurance and sovereignty, the block party collapses the distance between the gallery, the neighborhood, and the global currents the work addresses. 

Community events

Stories by the Spoonful—April 30, June 25, October 21, December 3
Bimonthly dinners bringing together Trondheim-based cooks, artists, and neighbors around homemade vegetarian meals and reflectional prompts. Each gathering centers a different culinary tradition, inviting personal recipes, shared narratives, and conversation across backgrounds. Coming menus feature Russian, Ghanaian, and Spanish cuisine as well as the stories they inspire… with many more to come.

Earthseed Book Club—May 29, July 3, September 21, November 27
Kunsthall Trondheim presents a living library honoring the legacy of science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler. Convened by Tendai Angela Jambga-Rokkones, the project explores Butler’s profound influence on contemporary writers from the Global South. The program features readings paired with in-situ performances, school visits, and workshops open to the local community.

Joe Rowley, Tendai Angela Jambga-Rokkones, and Adam Kleinman curate this season with the extended Kunsthall Team, chefs, artists, and participants—to all of whom we give thanks.