Presenting the work of Verdensrommet at the UKS Centennary Seminar “Artists Organizing Artists” in Oslo.
The Artist and Immigrant
Norway is the best place in the world to be an artist unless you are an immigrant artist, in which case, "immigrant" and "artist" are mutually exclusive identifiers.*
During 2017-2022 I lived in Norway on temporary residency permits for skilled work. On a skilled worker permit, one is limited to working exclusively within one's field of training. In my case, that is the visual art field, which is among the lowest paid. It meant that to fulfill the income requirement of my residence permit, I had to at times work 3 jobs simultaneously while taking Norwegian classes in the evenings, another requirement for eventual permanent residency. In trying so hard to stay in the country, there was hardly any time left to keep my own artistic practice moving forward, but I did give it my everything.
In these years, I experienced rejected permit applications, a letter informing me that I had 3 weeks to leave the country and the life I’d built here, burnout, restrictions on my movement. These years were characterized by exhaustion and a failure to thrive.
Norway locked down
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, an already vulnerable situation became untenable. The cultural sector was among the first to lock down, and the last to open. Politicians had no clear messaging for how non-EU artists like myself were meant to survive, let alone fulfill the requirements of our residency permits as our income sources disappeared.
The Founding of Verdensrommet
It was under these circumstances that I, together with my colleague Rodrigo Ghattas-Pérez, founded the mutual support network Verdensrommet (VR). VR's first working group consisted of us and fellow artists Prerna Bishnoi and Anthony Morton. VR has since then been a forum for fellow non-EU artists to trade advice and experiences as we collectively navigate the bureaucracy of the Norwegian Immigration Authority. VR has also been an important voice to organize and lobby for the interests of these artists in Norway. Much of this work has been to highlight the specific economic and bureaucratic challenges this community faces as artists, and quite simply, explain to politicians the material realities of this situation.
*There are a few different paths for an artist to migrate into Norway, such as family reunification or asylum seeking.
In this text I refer specifically to the artist who tries to migrate on the basis of their work, which is a normal progression for the art student, for example, who has come to study in Norway and wishes to stay and make use of the knowledge and network they have acquired during their studies.