October 1, 2025 — June 13, 2026

Jorge Otero-Pailos

Treaties on De-Fences

The Onera Foundation’s inaugural exhibition, Treaties on De-Fences, explored Jorge Otero-Pailos’ work on the Eero Saarinen-designed Cold War-era US Embassy in Oslo, Norway. In 2017, the US government decommissioned its embassy in Oslo, a modernist masterpiece. Otero-Pailos participated in the four-year restoration. When the steel fence that had guarded the embassy for more than fifteen years was slated for demolition, Otero-Pailos preserved it by transforming it into a series of sculptures.

Treaties on De-Fences featured a selection of these sculptures, along with an artist’s book of prints inspired by the fence. The exhibition was curated and produced by the Onera Foundation in close collaboration with Otero-Pailos Studio and the National Museum of American Diplomacy.

For a complete list of the artworks in this exhibition, click here.

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“My work seeks to dissolve the boundaries between art and preservation, showing how we can care for architecture by transforming it. I hope this exhibition invites audiences to see preservation not as an end, but as a creative beginning.”
— Jorge Otero-Pailos

Artist and preservationist Jorge Otero-Pailos discussing his experimental preservation of the Saarinen-designed US Embassy in Oslo. Film courtesy of the National Museum of American Diplomacy © 2024

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