“My inspiration was spolia and the principle of reuse,” says Palestinian artist Jumana Manna of the new 800 square metre floor, titled Sebastia, that she has created for the main square in Oslo’s soon-to-reopen government quarter.
Spolia, derived from the Latin word for spoils, refers to the reuse of materials or architectural fragments from earlier structures in new buildings.
“The use of spolia was common in Ottoman and Islamic architecture,” she says. “In Jerusalem, where I come from, the Old City is filled with beautifully repurposed architectural structures – pavements and stones from different eras.”
The renovated government quarter in Oslo will reopen this April, almost 15 years after a far-right extremist planted a car bomb at the site. Later that same day, he opened fire on a Workers’ Youth League summer camp on a nearby island.
Seventy-seven people were killed and many more injured. In the years since, the government quarter – which sustained considerable damage – has been rebuilt by Nordic Office of Architecture, with public art playing a central role in its renewal.
Sebastia is one of three major integrated artworks commissioned for the quarter by Koro, Norway’s public art agency, which oversees all art across the site.
The brief was intentionally open, Manna explains. The only stipulation was that the floor be made of Norwegian stone, preferably granite for its strength and durability. Despite Norway’s abundance of quarries, Manna immediately decided to create the work “without the need for extraction, but rather from materials that already existed”.
Her second decision became the guiding principle of the piece. “I reinterpreted the notion of Norwegian stone to mean any stone that had already made its way to Norway – a kind of semiotic twist that challenges ideas of what is considered Norwegian, and of belonging.”
Manna and Koro sent letters to Norway’s 350 municipalities asking for stone donations. About 100 responded. The resulting collection includes stones of varying sizes and types, once used to build factories, bridges, saunas, prisons, schools and city halls, as well as pieces from Trondheim Cathedral, the Royal Palace and Oslo’s new National Museum.
The finished floor sits somewhere between sculpture, mosaic, architecture and mural, and is equally layered in its references.
“I did a deep dive into Norway’s architectural and industrial histories, and how, around 300 years ago, there was a shift from a wood-based tradition to one increasingly centred on granite,” Manna says. “The oldest building in the government quarter dates back to the 19th century and consciously used granite as part of a nation-building project, drawing on its symbolic role in European national imaginaries.”
The work responds to this context, engaging with granite’s role in constructing national identity while also, as Manna puts it, remaining “antithetical to it” and “anti-monumental”.
With its uneven edges and dense patchwork of differently sized stones, Sebastia embodies this tension. It is at once striking and approachable – monumental in scale, but not in tone. Composed of reclaimed, varied materials, it carries a distinctly human quality; unlike more classical public works, it invites interaction rather than reverence.
The title Sebastia adds another layer. It refers to the Palestinian village and archaeological site in the occupied West Bank, which has long faced looting and increasing Israeli control.
“Sebastia was deeply compromised by the Oslo Accords,” Manna says. “They divided the village from the archaeological site, making it easier for settlers to attack it.”
In the work, Sebastia becomes a broader symbol of the perceived failures of the Oslo Accords. “They represented a false promise of independence,” she says, describing them as enabling a system that allowed further annexation and fragmentation.
By bringing Sebastia to Oslo, Manna creates a conceptual inversion of the city’s role in the accords, while also pointing to Norway’s political involvement and, she argues, its continued investments in the occupation.
The project has drawn criticism from right-wing media in Norway and beyond. “It’s not surprising that the right wing are unhappy that a Palestinian artist is creating what they describe as the largest public artwork in Norway today,” Manna says. She adds that, as a Palestinian artist working in Europe, she has faced sustained attacks in recent years.
“But that has nothing to do with what the work aims to offer,” she says. “It is about a material and cultural history of nation-building, and a critical perspective on governance and how to build ethically.”
Made from fragments and remnants, the work also challenges dominant narratives of the nation state. At the same time, it resonates with Manna’s own context – including the destruction in Gaza and across the region. In this sense, Sebastia becomes an example of how something new and dignified can emerge from what remains.
“This is something that has become part of Palestinian culture,” she says.
