05.01.2026 - 31.01.2026
Taylor Smith
Taylor Alaina Liebenstein Smith (b.1993) is an American-born visual artist with French citizenship, residing in Oslo.
She sees the climate crisis as a crisis in how we humans perceive, feel and act. With this as a starting point, she seeks to deconstruct perceived boundaries between scientific and artistic knowledge.
Taylor holds an MFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, a master's degree in cultural communication from the École du Louvre in Paris, and a bachelor's degree in painting and a bachelor's degree in art history from Boston University. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris and Atelier Nord in Oslo.
Taylor was with us at Velferden where she developed a series of short, experimental 16mm films. Working with body, movement and landscape, she explored themes related to industrial extraction and humanity's relationship with nature. Taylor writes about her stay:
“The edge of a hole we once built” is the title of one of these short films, which is now nearing completion. It is the result of a collaboration with architect Thomas McQuillan and opens with footage from a toxic waste landfill on Langøya in the Oslofjord, owned by the company NOAH.
The film traces this waste back to the Titania mines (where only part of the waste on Langøya originates) in Sokndal and to the now NOAH-owned Rekefjord Stone, whose quarries are also located near Velferden .
Like Langøya, which was formerly a limestone quarry, the norite and anorthosite quarries in Rekefjord have been proposed as a possible new reception facility for toxic waste as Langøya fills in. During my stay in Sokndal, I continued filming, both at Rekefjord Stone and in several of the disused mines in the area.
Since filming inside the Titania mines was not possible, I instead delved into Titania’s abandoned archives, basement, and vault—which I converted into a temporary darkroom—where I copied and exposed the company’s old maps and glass plate negatives, as well as rock and waste samples. I interspersed these archival traces with my own footage taken during long and demanding treks across the anorthosite lunar landscape.
While I was developing the 16mm film in the safe, I also soaked it in solutions of iron-oxidizing bacteria and mining waste, which are found in abundance around Velferden . I let these microbes and heavy metals attack the film's emulsion and attempted to fix the silver in the film using seawater from Jøssingfjord. Materially, physically and psychologically it was a powerful experience, and I was lucky to share it with such a generous group of artists – Kiarash, Sara and Nic – and Velferden's wonderful artist-mothers, Maiken and Hanna.”
Photo 1 © Hanna Biørnstad
Photos 2 - 7 © Taylor Smith