Constance Tenvik (b. 1990, London) is a Norwegian artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, performance, textile, costume, painting, drawing, and video. Working across these media, she creates immersive installations that function as self-contained worlds where myth, literature, history, and contemporary life intersect with humour, excess, and vibrant colour.

Tenvik’s work is often rooted in existing narratives, particularly canonical texts, operas, and mythological sources, which she approaches with a playful yet critical sensibility, re-interpreting, remixing and seeking to show their continued relevance and ideological undercurrents. Her work often probes human paradoxes, such as desire and escapism, vanity and vulnerability, power and belief, using exaggeration, choreography, and ornamentation to both seduce and disarm. Addressing themes such as imperial ambition, escapism, human desire - contradictions inherent in power and belief systems. Farce, exaggeration, and play are central to her approach, as both method and strategy, allowing Tenvik to address complex political and philosophical questions while preserving a sense of joy with an engaging visual abundance.

Her installations are characterised by a highly distinctive visual language: exuberant color palettes, stylized bodies, ornamental surfaces, and choreographed movement. Drawing from traditions of theater, pageantry, carnival, and gesamtkunstwerk, Tenvik blurs distinctions between fine art, performance, scenography, and decorative arts. Viewers are invited to move through spatial narratives rather than encounter singular objects, becoming participants in environments that oscillate between spectacle and intimacy, innocence and indulgence.

Performance plays a central role in Tenvik’s practice, both as a live act and as an organizing principle for her sculptural and pictorial work. Figures recur across media as characters rather than portraits, often caught in collective gestures, dancing, conspiring, celebrating, or idling, that evoke social rituals and shared experiences. While her work frequently suggests excess or hedonism, it resists violence and cynicism, instead cultivating a disarming theatricality that foregrounds vulnerability and human longing.

Tenvik also engages with textile and costume, collaborating with weaving workshops and textile producers to translate her drawings and paintings into monumental jacquard tapestries. These works extend her interest in ornament, heraldry, and myth, situating contemporary bodies within historical visual traditions. Her work has also moved fluidly into fashion and design contexts, most notably through artist editions and textile collaborations, without collapsing distinctions between art and applied practice.

Educated at Yale University School of Art (MFA) and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (BFA), Tenvik has presented solo exhibitions at institutions and galleries including the Munch Museum, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Kunstnernes Hus and UKS (Oslo), Loyal Gallery (Stockholm), Anat Ebgi (Los Angeles), Kristiansand Kunsthall, Prosjektrom Normanns (Stavanger), among others. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions internationally at Château du Feÿ (Bourgogne), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), The Breeder (Athens), Abrons Art Center (New York), and Carl Kostyál (Malmö), and is held in the collections of the National Museum (Oslo), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Kistefos Museum (Jevnaker, Norway), Zuzeum (Riga), and Fundación AMMA (Mexico City).

Education

2014-2016 MFA, Yale University School of Art in New Haven, CT
2011-2014 BA Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Oslo, Norway
2010-2011 Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Oslo, Norway
2009-2010 Reinhardt University, Waleska, GA, USA, GRSP art and theatre

Solo exhibitions

2025
A Shipwrecked Sailor, Hoffmann Maler Wallenberg, Panama City

2024
Constance Tenvik: Solo Oslo, Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway

2023
Finding Shelter Under a Giant’s Tongue, Harkawik, New York, NY

2022
Aloof Periwigs, Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA
Azuresque, Hoffmann Maler Wallenberg, Nice, France

2021
Long Reaching Gloves, Loyal, Stockholm, Sweden
Falling Eye Lashes, ISCA gallery, Oslo, Norway

2020
Artichoke Hearts, 56 Henry, New York, NY

2019
Voyage Autour de Ma Chambre, Sun and Spring in January, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norway
Riche Lunch Sessions, Lilla Baren, Stockholm, Sweden

2018
Helpless As Tortoises Prosjektrom Normanns, Stavanger, Norway

2017
Soft Armour, UKS & Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway
Gesamtkunst With Myself, Loyal, Stockholm, Sweden

Group Exhibitions

2025
The Day I Saw You: Portraits from the Amparo and Manuel Foundation Collection, CEX Centro de Exploración y Pensamiento Crítico, Mexico City
Bride of The Far Side, Post Times, New York, NY

2024
Smörgåsbord: A Group Exhibition of Nordic Artists, Berntson Bhattacharjee, London, England

2023
…out in the open fields, at night, by moonlight, surrounded by wine, and a lavender oil so powerful you could have weighed it out in silver…, VI, VII, Oslo, Norway
A Broom Will Leap Out of the Forest, Harkawik, NADA Miami, Miami, FL
An Island Called Everything, Harkawik, The Armory Show, New York, NY

2022
We Can Talk, Gerðarsafn Kópavogur Art Museum, Kópavogur, Iceland
The Ghost Busters, Charim Gallery, Vienna, Austria

2021
NFTism (No Fear in Trying), curated by Kenny Schachter, Unit Gallery & Institut, London, UK
Upclose, CF Hill Stockholm, Sweden
It’s Much Louder Than Before, organized by James Bartolacci and Stefano di Paola, Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA
Stockholm Sessions, Carl Kostyál, Hospitalet, Stockholm, Sweden

2020
100! The Hundredth Exhibition, Loyal, Stockholm, Sweden
Labyrinth of Solitude, 56 Henry/The Metropolitan Museum of Art (virtual)
Construction Site of Exceptional Feelings, The Breeder, Athens, Greece

2019
A Seed’s A Star, Loyal Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden
Seduce Life pop up exhibition in relation to Moki Cherry, Tågarp, Sweden
Malmö Sessions group exhibition organised by Carl Kostyál, Malmö, Sweden

2018
Flux, ft. Bendik Giske & Julian Fricker, Autumn Dinner, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway
Voyage Series, Feÿ – Rencontres d’arts
Coccaro on paper, initiated by Carl Kostyál, Puglia, Italy
Anatomy of Melancholy, Re:Framed, Pfizer, New York, NY

2017
When Life Gives You A Lemon, Patricia Field’s AF show, Joe’s Garage, Catskill, NY
Conceptual Romance, ft Marcel Duchamp and Henriette Martinsen, LJP, Kristiansand
Domestic Tranquility, 0-0, Los Angeles

2016
CDCDDCDCDCDD, Loyal Gallery, ft/Brian Belott, Ara Peterson, Vasulkas, Stockholm
Eye of the Tired, Deli Projects, Basel
Game of Life III: Juliusvariasjonene, Kristiansand Kunsthall, Kristiansand

2015
Kunstprisen 2015 (award exhibition) Sandefjord Kunstforening, Sandefjord

2014
Simone Weil Mindmap, Collection As Allocated Objects, Tidenes Krav, Oslo

2013
Chaos Drawings & Mind Maps, works on paper, Sound Versus System, Kunsthall Oslo
Witch Action, Tournament d’Objet, Charlottenborg, Copenhagen

Collections

Zuzeum Art Center, Riga, Latvia
Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
National Museum, Oslo, Norway
Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway
Gullringsbo Konstsamling, Stockholm, Sweden
Fundación AMMA, Mexico City