Up-and-coming street artist Eva Hansen Sjøvold painted Norway’s first LGBTQ+ mural as part of Løkka-lykke Street Art Festival in Oslo this past June. Løkka-lykke is the first street art festival in Norway to take place in the capital city, and it has a decidedly local profile, aiming to work with local Norwegian artists. Eight artists were invited to participate this year, with Eva Hansen Sjøvold, only 21 years old, creating one of the festival’s stand-out pieces.
“I was so surprised by being invited to participate in the Oslo Street Art Festival. I did not think it would be something so big,” said Sjøvold. “The motif I’ve painted, ‘Next to a Mirror,’ features two friends of mine, slightly turned apart, in a purple-blue light. I wanted to make something that was queer—but at the same time not so clearly queer, inspired by the way you meet other queer people on the street. Maybe they smile a little at each other, without people around wanting to see this connection. It’s a gay man and a lesbian woman—it could have been a love painting, but it is still not.”
Held in the central district of Grünerløkka, Løkka-lykke announced itself on the street art scene in 2021 with 11 artists producing site-specific works ranging from large scale murals to small scale interventions. The event’s return in summer 2022 solidified it as Oslo´s first annual street art festival.
Sjøvold recently graduated from Oslo’s Einar Granum art school. Her invitation to the festival came by chance.
“When I walked past the school where Eva was studying, I peered into the window and saw their paintings, which hung from the ceiling to the floor.” said James Finucane, director of Street Art Oslo. “I was very impressed with what I saw, and it was obvious they could do scale. I reached out to Eva on Instagram and invited them to do their first mural. Interestingly enough, they said they always wanted to do one. It’s actually their preferred format. We really work to find the rough gems that are living and working in Norway, and Eva certainly represents that.” For Sjøvold, they are proud to represent the LGBTQ+ community, but it’s also surreal and a huge confidence boost to show people what they do in such a public way.
“As a queer, I’m interested in the androgynous and experiment a lot with visual language in relation to this. I want to find ways to express the ‘inner space’—that is, the lives of others and my own emotional life through figurative painting,” they said. “I like to paint others rather than myself, because in that way these characters can become something I use to understand both myself and those I paint.” The significance of Norway’s first LGBTQ+ mural isn’t lost on the artist or the festival itself.
“A part of the painting I haven’t talked about much is that it represents a picture of a queer wonderland, a surrealistic queer wonderland,” Sjøvold siad. “The aesthetics and color pallet come from the nonbinary flag. The reason I paint queer things is because I’m queer, it’s just that simple. Getting the support that others find meaning in it is very special. It’s very fun, and it’s an honor to represent less of a binary story in a public space. Norway is in some ways a very binary country, so it’s exciting to see something different.”
For the festival, it wasn’t Sjøvold’s queer identity but their talent that stood out. It’s also a positive signal to other art students: The opportunities are there, if you’re good enough. “We didn’t invite her for that reason [being queer], we invited her because she was a great artist,” Finucane said. “She’s so young, but we gave her the platform and trusted her to make it work. And she did. But what happened just after the mural was completed reiterates why we need more work like this and more people like Eva represented in the public space.”
During Pride month and less than 24 hours after the mural was finished, a shooting took place at a gay bar in Oslo that took the lives of two people. Sjøvold’s mural served as a place to gather and a source of comfort following the tragedy. “Literally and symbolically this mural took on a new meaning after that incident,” Finucane said. “Prejudice and violence still exist, you can’t get complacent.”
Street art’s power to invoke deep emotion and bring people together after such a tragedy is just one of the ways it can transform a community. However, previous to the festival’s launch, Nordic capital cities had a zero tolerance policy against street art. “They’re finally coming around,” Finucane said. “The younger generation definitely sees the value of art in public spaces. But we still have to combat a lot of the negative stereotypes about graffiti art. We do that every day. The idea that it’s mindless vandalism is a constant stereotype, but there is deep thought and creativity that go into this art.”
For their next project, Sjøvold will be painting a wall in their hometown of Mo i Rana on August 15—a 60-meter wall in the heart of the city. “It will be very fun to show the people I grew up with what I learned,” Sjøvold said. “I really think I found myself on the big walls.” As for the festival, it is coming back in 2023 and has no plans to stop. “The festival will now be held every year,” Finucane said. “There are so many great walls, and so many great artists. We have a long list of dream walls we want to paint and dream artists we want to showcase, so we try to match those up,” said Finucane.
Street Art Oslo is breaking down barriers, driving acceptance and inclusivity, and providing a platform for emerging artists. And we’re here for it.
Eva Hansen Sjøvold: website | instagram
Street Art Oslo: website | instagram
Mural location: Marstrandgata 12, 0566 Oslo
