Svein Ingvoll Pedersen lives in Henningsvær in the Lofoten islands. Over the last 20 years he has been working with contemporary art in Norway’s northern regions in various capacities: Director, curator, organizer, lecturer and writer.
From 2014 to 2021 he served as director of the Nordnorsk kunstnersenter and the LIAF-biennial (Lofoten International Art Festival). Between 2008 and 2013 he was director and artistic director of Tromsø Kunstforening. Since 2021 he is department director of Museum Nord in Vågan.
Pedersen holds an MA in art history. He is an associate member of WONA (Worlding Northern Art), the art historical research group at UiT The Arctic University of Norway.
At Tromsø Kunstforening (TKF) he initiated, curated and co-curated a series of solo shows with a number of artists working with moving images, among others Jesper Just, Annika Larsson, Sigurður Guðjónsson, Bodil Furu and Sigalit Landau. At TKF he led the PolArt project, a collaboration between TKF, Troms County, The Norwegian Polar Institute, Arctic Frontiers and the research network ARCTOS, encouraging collaboration between art and science through inviting artists to participate on marine research expeditions to the Arctic and producing new works for exhibitions.
Pedersen has on several occasions collaborated with sound artists, and together with Karolin Tampere and Nordic partner organizations MUU and and C-Y ContemporarY he in 2018 conceived and co-curated the Lofoten Sound Art Symposium held in Henningsvær.
Through his work in Norway’s northern regions he has often found himself thinking about questions related to relations between (what is perceived as) the local and the international and connections between what is often called the global art world and artistic practices and curatorial work rooted in specific sites and areas. This was a motivation for, together with two other biennials, establishing the alliance Occasional Groundwork.
As part of his work at Museum Nord, a museum organization operating 21 museums of both cultural and natural history in the Lofoten-Vesterålen-Ofoten-region, Pedersen is currently working on the art programme for the upcoming Skrei-center. Through a cross disciplinary approach Skrei will show the deep impact the great seasonal fisheries in Lofoten have left in culture, as well as man’s impact on ocean life.
Occasionally he writes about art. His most recently published article was on artist Inghild Karlsen’s work on northern coastal landscapes, avant-garde strategies and identity, published in the Norwegian academic art history journal Kunst&Kultur.
