Husk Gallery is delighted to present ‘Happiness is Easy’, the second solo show with Norwegian artist Hanne Lydia Opøien Figenschou in its gallery space. This exhibition features her new series of drawings, created between 2024 and 2026. Titled 'Happiness is Easy', the drawings explore the duality of happiness in relation to contemporary global realities, reflecting the tension between external events and internal states. The artist invites viewers to engage with the implicit ideologies embedded within the images, questioning how notions of happiness in Norway and beyond are constructed, mediated, and experienced.
Hanne Lydia's works, meticulously created with coloured pencils on black paper, unfold as fragmented visual narratives shaped by overwhelming impressions and contemplative perceptions. She started the series of drawings under the working title 'Shame', inspired by the results of the World Happiness Report. As Norway consistently has ranked in the top 10 happiest nations worldwide, she decided to use the Happiness project as a backdrop. She later renamed the series 'Happiness is Easy', inspired by the eponymous title track of the British band Talk Talk. Much like the drawings, the song evokes an ambiguous and subtly unsettling vision of happiness while exploring our ongoing quest for it and the many personal and collective forces that can give rise to feelings of shame.
Throughout the series, everyday objects and scenes are imbued with multiple layers of meaning, exposing the tensions between the personal and the collective. The drawings resist linear coherence, mirroring instead the scattered and often contradictory nature of thought and experience. In many works, text and image intertwine, with words embedded directly into the drawings to create tensions between language and motif. Themes range from personal identity and self-representation to broader social and political concerns, including violence, mental health, gendered realities and shifting democratic rights. The discrepancy between the title and the caption is not a coincidental effect, but a deliberate strategy: it prevents a single, unambiguous interpretation and compels the viewer to adopt an active, critical stance.
About the artist
Over the years, Hanne Lydia Opøien Figenschou has been creating a body of work consisting of video, prose, and drawings, with recurrent motives and thematic cross-references. The artist explores themes of gender and identity, violence in close relationships, the self-portrait, tourism, feminism, abortion and recently, happiness and shame. Her works evoke a recurrent interest in the blatant and public versus the intimate. Text is often employed in installations, video work, performances and also published in books. She is renowned for her 'trompe l'oeil' drawings on black paper in various sizes, all meticulously created with coloured pencils. Her drawings are based on snapshots taken with a smartphone and each work is meticulously created. From a distance, the drawings may seem relatively photorealistic, but close inspection reveals that they are composed of rough elements.
Hanne Lydia Opøien Figenschou grew up in Tromsø, above The Arctic Circle. She now lives and works in Oslo and Tromsø. She studied at Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, Norway, and The University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm, Sweden. Figenschou has had a large number of exhibitions, and has won several significant awards for her works. She received two times a prestigious ten-year Working Grant from The Norwegian Arts Council (2015-2035). Her works have been purchased by several influential Art Institutions, among them The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Norway and Shaanxi Museum of Fine Arts, Xi’an, China. She contributed artwork to the cruise ships Viking Octantis and Viking Polaris (2021 and 2022). She attended a residency in Roma, Circolo Scandinavo (2016) and she stayed in Paris, France, at Cité internationale des Arts, a residency made possible by Ingrid Lindbäck Langgaards Foundation, NO (2022). As from 13 October 2023 up to 31 March 2024 she was presented with a large-scale work in The National Museum, Norway, as a part of The Drawing Triennial.
