Martin Bjørnesen og Inger Emilie Solheim
Gul Sol is a Norwegian /Kven /Sámi artist duo working at the intersection of poetry, sculpture, sample-based electronic sound, field recordings, and live improvisation. Artist/poet Inger Emilie Solheim (Alta) and DJ/producer Martin Bjørnersen (Groruddalen) met through their exploration of their respective Kven family backgrounds—a national minority with a Finno-Ugric language and cultural heritage. Their shared interests quickly developed into an explosive collaboration, and shortly after their first work session in June 2025 they had already performed at Nitja Centre for Contemporary Art and at major festivals such as Melafestivalen and Førde International Folk Music Festival.
Gul Sol revives and reworks fragments of family history—such as a grandmother’s completed crossword puzzle, a great-grandfather’s Kven protective runes, and a deceased father’s cassette tapes—to acknowledge that the past is not an authoritative story, but an endless series of possible narratives. Reuse applies both to their physical works and to their sound pieces. Solheim contributes sculpture made from household waste and gathered materials from nature, as well as text and vocals in Kven and Norwegian. Bjørnersen contributes text and vocals in addition to composing in real time with samples, archival and field recordings related to Norway’s five national minorities and the Sámi people, as well as personal and family sources.
Gul Sol creates performative works that can be described as guided fog-walks through a landscape of lost language, and as ritual offerings to a dawning new sun.
PREMIEKRYSSORD HJEMMET 25 1985
“Premiekryssord Hjemmet 25 1985” (2025) consists of four elements: a completed crossword puzzle from issue no. 25 of the magazine Hjemmet (1985), a photograph of Martin Bjørnersen’s Kven grandmother, Jenny Bjørnersen, in her apartment at Ammerud, the poem “Premiekryssord” created by the duo Gul Sol from the crossword’s solution words, and a live performance of the poem as a sound piece, performed together with musician Ivar Winther on flutes.
The crossword was completed by Martin’s grandmother, who was born in Vadsø in 1915 and lived at Ammerud from the early 1970s until her passing in 2011. The magazine was found by chance in 2023, when Bjørnersen entered an unlocked storage room connected to the family’s old cabin after it had changed owners. All the frames and tools used in creating the work—such as thread, hammer, and staples—came from the apartment of Martin’s father, Tor Bjørnersen, who lived at Linderud and passed away in 2024. All the sounds used in the live performance (except for voice and flute) are samples from a cassette tape Tor Bjørnersen recorded from the radio in the early 1980s. The poem “Premiekryssord” itself is printed on white paper with a gaffer-tape backing, a printout that was used on stage by Gul Sol during their first official performance concert as a duo.
