Photo: Myriam Cohenca
Biography
Sandra Strømme is a Norwegian artist based between Paris and Monaco. Born in Oslo in 1994 and raised in France, her work exists at the intersection of these two cultural landscapes. Inspired by Nordic visual traditions including interlacing forms, organic motifs, and forest imagery, her practice is equally shaped by the legacy of French Surrealism and its exploration of the unconscious.
Her artistic training began with three years of intensive study under Norwegian painter Bjørn Algrim, where she learned the classical techniques of oil painting. She later earned a Master's degree in Fine Arts from Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and trained in traditional Norwegian wood carving at the Treskjærerverkstedet workshop near Oslo.
Before dedicating herself fully to her artistic practice, Strømme worked in communications for the United Nations, including in Myanmar, and as a freelance writer and editor. Her academic background also includes degrees in the History of Ideas and Art History from the University of Oslo, an MA in Medieval History from King's College London, and a Master's degree in Journalism from the École Supérieure de Journalisme de Paris.
Her work has been exhibited in France and Norway, including at the Sorbonne Library in Paris, Arthouse 11 in Villefranche-sur-Mer, and Nordberg Church in Oslo. Her practice has been featured in the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen, as well as in Visual Art Journal and Suboart Magazine. Her first solo exhibition, organised by the municipality of Arbonne-la-Forêt near Paris, is scheduled for December 2026.
Statement
Sandra Strømme’s work is rooted in a practice she calls Neo-Nordic Surrealism. Through painting and sculpture, she creates a personal cosmology in which each work becomes a threshold between the visible world and the unseen forces that shape it.
Drawing on the psychology of the unconscious, her work explores the symbolic dimension of human experience. Influenced by the ideas of Carl Jung, she approaches the image as a space where archetypes, inner landscapes, and fragments of memory can emerge. Her paintings do not seek to illustrate stories so much as give form to psychological realities that are at once deeply personal and universally shared.
Nature and architecture are central to her visual language and often appear as reflections of one another. Forests, roots, and organic forms exist alongside rooms, houses, and thresholds, all of which function as metaphors for inner states. These spaces become sites of transformation, tension, refuge, and passage. In her work, nature takes on an architectural presence, while architecture reveals itself as something living, symbolic, and deeply connected to the natural world.
Working across oil painting and wood carving, Strømme seeks to dissolve the boundary between image and object. Trained in classical painting techniques, she builds her surfaces through successive layers, alternating luminous glazes with richer passages of paint. Alongside her paintings, she creates sculptural frames inspired by Nordic carving traditions, combining contemporary technologies with handcraft techniques rooted in the past. Rather than containing the image, these carved structures extend it, allowing the work to occupy a more architectural space.
A recurring motif throughout her practice is the Viking knot, which appears both within her paintings and in her carved frames. Its interwoven forms evoke cyclical time and the interconnectedness of past, present, and future. At the same time, they reflect the creative process itself: the gradual untying of inner knots.