Art & Craft lectures:
Jorge Manilla: I wanted to be like them
On nomadic lifestyles, materiality, forms, and seeking new languages and expressions.
This lecture addresses what it means to me to be a migrant and have a nomadic lifestyle. This has led me to think about and see things from different perspectives, living in different countries and speaking different languages. I am always searching for new meanings and how I can represent them in materials and forms. Some of my work expresses my cultural or personal references. I will talk about what inspires me and how I translate images, experiences, and emotions into my art.
I will address themes such as the fears and doubts that accompany me on my life's journey and how this influences my artistic practice from the perspective of a contemporary nomad, and how I represent my identity through my work in diverse historical and cultural contexts. As a material-based artist, I create work that transcends the interdisciplinary and cultural. My work is often described as dark, and this darkness has been associated for millennia with negative categories ranging from sin to triviality, but it remains fundamental to art and cultural practice.
When talking about inspirations, references in a life in motion, as well as constant learning, this lecture will seek to explain how, by wanting to be like them, over the years I found myself more.
Jorge Manilla
Jorge Manilla is a Mexican-Belgian artist born in Mexico City, lives and works between Ghent Belgium and Oslo Norway. His internationally acclaimed jewellery objects and sculptures explore the vulnerability of the humans, the duality of life and death, and themes of suffering and protection through natural materials like wood, seaweed, animal skin, to mention some of them. His work draws heavily on historical and mythological and philosophical sources, including the aztec culture, Christian iconography, sincretisme and identity.
Manilla is Professor of the subject area Metal and art jewellery at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway. Manilla is constantly active internationally as a visiting professor critic and tutor of art programs in different institutions and private organizations. His work has been acquired by various museums and private collections private all around the world.
The Art and Craft lectures
The Art and Craft lectures, hosted by the Art and Craft Department at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, is an annual lecture series devoted to art education, research, theory, and politics. The program, curated by Sara R. Yazdani and Susanne M. Winterling, nurtures an interdisciplinary exchange of practice and theory.
The 2025/2026 program explores knowledge and its production: through ways of making, thinking, and practice. Moving away from Modern dualities towards what Rosi Braidotti defines as the posthuman condition, we are concerned with the relational, affective, and epistemic processes that define our ways of being, with the human, nonhuman, and technical mediations.
The lecture series is part of the MFA art and theory course contextualization and artistic practice of the two programs Medium- and Material Based Art, and Art and Public Space. Taking a collaborative approach to practice and research, the lecture series seeks to generate inspiration, critical navigation, and community across the arts. It invites scholars, artists, and curators from different disciplines to give traditional keynotes, performances, and conversations that guide the semester. It is a platform for students and faculty to share and discuss practice, concerns, and inspiration, with an open door to the public.
The lectures are free and open to the public.
The Auditorium, KHiO
Fossveien 24, Oslo
*
Photo: Jorge Manilla, Her complexity is a glorious fire, 2024, tree bark made into fiber, bronze thorns (organic casting). Picture: Leona Marie Špačková
Also check out other Arts events in Oslo, Craft events in Oslo, Workshops in Oslo.
