Doors: 18:30
Event start: 19:00
Seated event
This conversation is held in Norwegian
‘None of us ever brought flowers when visiting Beckomberga, and there were never flowers in the psych ward when I visited,’ writes Sara Stridsberg in her essay in the MUNCH publication Livsblod – Edvard Munch. ‘As if we consider the case, the breakdown, the depression, the psychosis, the diagnosis to be self-inflicted and in some way or other sinful (linked with the devil, as it was in the past) and suspicious (a crime, immoral).’
For Stridsberg, Edvard Munch's Melancholy – a portrait of the artist's mentally ill sister Laura in a room that is practically on fire around her - is an image of precisely this notion of the ‘sinful’ psychiatric patient. In the conversation ‘Who Cares about the Sick Mind?’ Stridsberg will discuss how mental illness is understood and portrayed in art and literature, including in her own books, together with curator and writer Marte Danielsen Jølbo.
About the series Who Cares?
Death in the Sickroom, The Sick Child, Melancholy. Several of Edvard Munch's works testify to an artist seeking a visual language for lives that were fragile and vulnerable. The difficult themes raised in Munch's work are personal and, for some, private issues that affect us all.
In public discourse, these topics are approached with caution. This might be linked to the desire to show respect or care for those affected, or perhaps it is a case of protecting oneself from life's discomforts. Can caution sometimes be too cautious, and care too caring, when we fail to gain a deeper understanding or a nuanced perspective, for fear of raising difficult questions?
The series Who Cares? is linked to the exhibition Edvard Munch – Lifeblood. In a series of four conversations in autumn 2025, we reflect on how art can both create one-dimensional archetypes but also expand our perspectives and understanding of body and gender, health and illness, life and death.
Sara Stridsberg is an internationally recognised author and playwright, and a former member of the Swedish Academy. Her works have been translated into more than 25 languages and won numerous awards, including the Nordic Council Literature Prize for The Dream Faculty (2006), which was also longlisted for the international Man Booker Prize in 2019. Stridsberg's plays are staged all over the world, while her novels - including Beckomberga, Darling River and The Antarctic of Love - have cemented her position as one of Europe's foremost storytellers. Her critically acclaimed new novel, Farewell to Panic Beach, was published in Norwegian in 2025.
Marte Danielsen Jølbo is a curator, writer and editor with a background in literature and cultural communication. She is interested in the connections between art, literature and architecture, and in 2012 she founded the publishing house and project space Another Space together with Nicola Markhus. From 2013–19, Jølbo was co-founder and editor of the online journal Contemporary Art Stavanger. Since then she has been artistic director of MUNCH's live programme, general manager of Hå Gamle Prestegard and curator at KORO. She currently runs the Edvard Munch Foundation's Atelier at Ekely.
©Sara Mackey, Kenneth Varpe
