Susanne Quist, born in 1984 in Mandal, Norway, holds a BFA from Trondheim Academy of Fine Art. Her main mediums are drawing and photography.
Her oeuvre evolves from a lifelong fascination with topics such as perception, consciousness and cognition. Often her works depict situations where something has been tweaked or twisted; something is unclear or uncertain. The everyday experience of one's immediate environment is destabilized, and in particular it is often the sight which has become difficult or obscure. Quist is interested in what happens when one dissolves signification, categories and body language – when sign systems and identities crackle, and disturbing elements interrupt.
Man is socialized into sign systems of which one is only partly conscious, and these systems add strong normative constraints on action, understanding and perception. Through art it is possible to insist on alternative experiences and lifestyles than the environment, social conventions and ideology set as norm. In this sense art implies a form of resistance, but not in a one-sided negative sense. To insist on reinventing forms and cartographies means giving life opportunity to expand.