Constance Tenvik dances, starts book club in Edvard Munch’s studio in preparation for her ambitious solo show at MUNCH Museum

Over the past nine months, Norwegian artist Constance Tenvik has made some major life changes. “I moved back to Oslo, got a swimming membership, started a book club…” she says. No, she wasn’t making a hard pivot to settle down as a housewife, but rather gearing up towards the most ambitious exhibition of her career: a solo show at MUNCH Museum (its the latest in the museum’s Solo Oslo series, which showcases contemporary artists). Moving into Edvard Munch’s former studio, Tenvik has been diligently working to bring her exhibition, dubbed Tio-tio-tinx, to life.

While the swimming was unrelated to the exhibition, the book club was a vital part of Tenvik’s preparation. Tio-tio-tink, which represents birdsong, is a modern retelling of Aristophanes’s comedy The Birds and the book club was organised to read the work, which dates back to 414 BC, in full. “I got a philosopher and Greek expert who had translated Aristophanes from Greek to Norwegian and a violinist from the opera,” says Tenvik. “First he read The Birds and then The Frogs out loud.” The first book club meeting started at 11.00AM and by the time The Birds was complete most of the attendees had given up and left for dinner. “At the end it was just the Greek expert and me,” she says, noting that they took a short break to eat sushi and go to a bar. “We were not done until one in the morning.”

What drew Tenvik to Aristophane’s work in the first place? “I love a good story,” she says. The Birds tells the story of two humans who, with the help of some birds, take over the air. Their mission? To challenge the gods, of course. “Even though it’s written 414 years before our time, it’s quite funny,” says Tenvik, also noting how modern the narrative is. “Billionaires these days want to go to the moon or to some planet. It’s this escapist idea, and also this idea that we as humans believe that we can manage to live somewhere other than Earth.” For the record, Tenvik herself doesn’t believe we’re getting off this planet.

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The exhibition, which takes over the 10th floor gallery space at MUNCH, is an immersive world of sculpture and video, textile and painting. Given the top-floor location, it only made sense to tell a story that invokes the heavens. “Instead of building it vertically, with humans and then birds, then gods, I wanted to have people move through these zones of space,” says Tenvik. Visitors pass through a massive gate before greeting a sculpture of wings, fashioned from goose-feathered shuttlecocks. “Those were a hassle to make,” says Tenvik.

Elsewhere, massive jacquard weavings feature a cast of characters in Tenvik’s signature topsy-turvy aesthetic. A video, presenting the artist’s modern spin on the story, finds young dancers and creatives cast as fashionable gods (she came across the perfect Zeus in an Oslo coffee shop. He turned out to be a pole dancer). To mark the exhibition, Tenvik has also created a limited edition silk scarf, which released within Palazzo Real’s Munch exhibition during Milan Fashion Week.

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While Tenvik’s work isn’t in direct dialogue with that of Munch, it was hard not to think of the Norwegian master whilst working in his studio. “The studio has a very particular light situation, where you almost never need to turn on the lights,” she says. “I love to be in his huge space with perfect natural light, surrounded by birds and trees and seeing how the seasons changed with the flowers and the apple trees.” Throughout her residency, visitors stopped by and told stories of the artist. One friend informed Tenvik that Munch used to piss in the sink, for instance. “A lot of people are like, ‘Have you met the ghost?’,” she says. “I’m not sure about the ghost, but I have been very prolific, and he was very prolific. You don’t want to slack off in this space.”

Despite her breakneck working pace, Tenvik did take the occasional break to dance. Those who follow the artist on Instagram know that she oft puts down the brush to boogie. Here, exclusively for Vogue Scandinavia, Tenvik captured a handful of these dance breaks in the historic studio. “Dancing is a nice way to warm up a place and make it feel like mine – dress up a bit, do some moves,” she says. “It’s important to bring your own energy and take ownership.”

Contance Tenvik's Tio-tio-tinx opens at Munch September 28th. Tickets and more information available here.