Wonderful, Marvelous

Desire as punishment, promise as its own undoing.

Sibyl from ancient Cumae asked the gods for eternal life. Apollo granted her wish in exchange for her virginity, but when she refused him, the gift turned into punishment: endless years without eternal youth. Sibyl withered across centuries, eventually confined in a jar, invisible, her voice the only thing that outlasted her body.

That surviving voice is where Camille Norment’s work at Atelier Nord begins. A recorded woman’s voice drifts through the gallery, carrying songs from the 1940s, promising love, peace, desire and freedom. Yet, as in the myth, these songs hold their own trap. Born from a time marked by war, instability and political longing, they can now create the illusion of coming from a more hopeful past.

Norment strips these songs back until only fragments remain: single chords, melodic traces, hints of recognition held just out of reach. Microphones placed in the room capture what the speakers emit and return it altered, amplified and unstable. The audience enters this acoustic system, and their presence shifts the balance between voice, room and feedback. 

What remains is both warning and possibility: the danger of mistaking the past for a place of fulfilment, but also the chance to shape old fragments into something new.

Want to know more?

• Wonderful, Marvelous is produced by Atelier Nord and presented as part of Ultima. The exhibition opens officially on 3 September and runs from 4 September to 29 November 2026.
• The myth of the Cumaean Sibyl is known from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where she is granted long life by Apollo, but not eternal youth. Over time her body disappears, leaving only her voice.
• Also at Ultima: In HUSH, the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir premieres Norment’s Wonderful, Marvelous – a fugue state, drawing on the same sonic material as the installation, including voice and feedback.