Oliver Hambsch

Oliver Hambsch serves as a Research Fellow at the Department of Art and Craft, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, specializing in printmaking through interdisciplinary practice at the intersection of materiality and memory studies.

His educational background includes a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art (2019) and Master of Fine Art (2022) from the University of Cape Town, establishing foundational expertise in contemporary artistic methodologies.

Hambsch's research interrogates printmaking processes as analogical parallels to personal memory systems, with particular focus on hauntological perspectives of material objects. His work examines how analog media like woodcuts and VHS embody non-volatile memory characteristics, exploring material decay as metaphor for cognitive fragmentation. Through tactile engagement with print processes, he investigates how paratextual information in artistic production constructs mnemonic frameworks that challenge digital-era memory paradigms.

His 2024-2025 output reveals consistent thematic concentration on material memory manifestations, with exhibitions and lectures analyzing woodcut/VHS materiality, date-specific memory installations, and collaborative cross-cultural memory projects. These works demonstrate evolving exploration of how printmaking's physical processes—ink absorption, plate erosion, and impression transfer—mirror neurological memory encoding and retrieval mechanisms.

As an active PhD researcher, Hambsch contributes to artistic knowledge production through practice-based inquiry, with recent outputs including museum exhibitions at Oslo National Academy venues and presentations at the Artistic Research Forum. His collaborative projects with international artists extend his material memory investigations into collective cultural memory frameworks.