Julie Lillelien Porter (she/her) is an English-Norwegian artist, curator and writer based in Bergen, Norway. She has a particular interest in exploring psychological, corporeal and existential themes, and to generate transformative experiences through artistic and curatorial work. A long standing question in her work is ‘How do we embody experiences of unfamiliarity?’

Moving from England to the 1980s Norway resonates with Lillelien Porter’s interest for deep stories. What was likely the reason to move from England to Norway, a decade of political and religious conflicts? Contextual attention and deep stories function as portals for creation and agency. ‘The focus on the alien, the unfamiliar, – this x-factor is characterised by several contradictions, the stranger is the known, familiar, to some extent, in the sense that the artist is conscious of a stranger and therefore approaches the stranger (...)’. Rather than holding on to the childhood dream of being a spy with a mission to reveal what goes on underneath the surface, Lillelien Porter believes working with art is exactly that: the unfamiliar as agent between conscious and unconscious, and the possibility for this agency to be transferred into life itself.

Since 2017 she is the director and head curator of Lydgalleriet, Norway's only permanent exhibition space dedicated to sound art and sonic media. In this role she has developed a programme where sounds’ intersectional nature, and how the medium finds itself in the middle of a paradoxicality, has been her main area of interest. Intersectionality provides ‘de-isolating’ frameworks for navigating the sonic medium into new dimensions, where context-sensitivity and exploration of formats are important tools.

Lillelien Porter also contributes to the broader art community and independent sector through committee work, cultural policy discussions and leadership roles. She was a founding member of the artist group and publishing site ytter.no in 2008, which focused on self-publishing, critical art formats and collaborative practices. Her discursive work has a consistent subtlety, whether editorial, publishing or conversational. Many of her interviews and reviews have materialised in journals such as Billedkunst, KUNSTforum, kunstkritikk.no, kritiker.nu, amongst others. Lillelien Porter has her education from The Glasgow School of Art, Bergen National Academy of the Arts and BI Business School.

(Quote taken from Pedro Carmona-Alvarez’ book Hjemmelekser, 2007)