Amina Sahan

Amina Sahan is an artist with Iraqi and Norwegian background, based in Oslo, Norway. She is educated as an art teacher (Bachelorś Program Specialized Teacher Training in Design, Arts and Crafts, Masterś Program in Visual and Performing Arts: Art and Design Education at Oslo and Akershus University College) and has worked both as a teacher and an artist in the last 4 years.

Sahan is inspired by ongoing debates concerning multiculturalism, diversity and freedom of speech. Working primarily with painting, but also drawing and mixed media, her work concentrates on contrasts in both the content it depicts and its materiality.

In 2016 she wrote her Master thesis in Arts and Design Education on the relationship multicultural youth in Oslo have with visual art. She has developed this topic throughout her artistic career and as an activist, using exhibitions, lectures and the media. Her intention is to make art available in public space, and relatable to the multicultural youth of Oslo.

Sahan has exhibited in various arenas in Norway, Sweden and New York. Both in galleries and urban spaces.

Ella Heidi Sand

Ella Heidi Sand (b. 1957) studied at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, graduating in 1984, with further studies at the State University of New York, USA. She has participated in exhibitions both in Norway and abroad, and has held several solo exhibitions. She is a member of the art collective The Archive.

Sand has coordinated a number of jewelry exhibitions abroad, and has had several assignments as an art consultant for KORO (Public Art Norway). For 7 years she was the director of RAM gallery in Oslo. From 2006 -2013 she was a professor at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in Oslo (KHiO) where she was Head of the Department for Metalwork and Jewellery.

Permanent collections include: The Norwegian Council of Culture, The Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, SKMU Art Museum Kristiansand, The Museum of Applied Art in Oslo, Vestlandske Museum of Applied Art in Bergen and Nordenfjeldske Museum of Applied Art in Trondheim.

Image 1: Displacement. Necklace; brass, nylon thread. Photo by Sveinung Bråthen

Image 2: Who Cares. Necklace; silver, copper, plastic covered steel, nylon thread. Photo by Elsie-Ann Hochlin

Image 3: Empty Diamonds. Necklaces; silver, nylon thread. Photo by Øyvind Suul

Image 4: Powder Necklace; woman facial soft cotton sponge powder puff pads, copper. Photo by Elsie-Ann Hochlin

Hanneline Røgeberg

Hanneline Røgeberg is a painter born in Oslo, Norway and holds a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Yale. Her work has been featured in group and solo exhibits in institutions such as the Whitney Museum; the MIT List Center; the Aldrich Museum; Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati; Vancouver Art Gallery, BC; the Inside-Out Art Museum Beijing, China; the Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, and Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium in Norway. Recent and upcoming solo exhibits include Thomas Erben Gallery, New York and Galleri Riis in Oslo.

She has received an Ingram-Merrill award, a WESTAF/NEA grant, an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, a Guggenheim fellowship, an Anonymous-Was-A-Woman award and an OCA grant, in addition to numerous residencies.

She is a professor at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University and has previously held positions at Cooper Union, University of Washington and Yale University. She was a visiting artist at Skowhegan in 2009, and is a graduate critic at Yale School of Art in the spring of 2019.

She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and Oslo, Norway.

Image 1: ‘National Sins: The hole’, 2014

Image 2: Installation shots from ‘Off the Bone’ solo exhibit at Blackston gallery, 2015

Image 3: ‘Rebound Extrovert’, 2013

Image 4: ‘Rebound Introvert’, 2013

Maija Rudovska

Maija Rudovska’s practice is shaped by independent curation, research, art criticism and writing. The focus of her work has been inter-mediation and stimulation of relationships between different spaces, contexts and institutions. Finding a voice from/in the marginalized spaces that in her practice often rooted from the post-Soviet context, she pays particular attention to the in-between space seeking alternative ways of learning and sharing knowledge in the art realm today.

For the last 6 years Rudovska together with Juste Kostikovaite have been running the network platform Blind Carbon Copy that focuses on network building models, alternative education and work strategies between curators, artists and other practitioners. One of the priorities has been the learning, looking for the ways to teach each other as a sort of curatorial strategy. Engaging by creating a lively networking system and structures of self-organization (refusing to being attached to a certain power structure), the platform serves as a place from where to act and to find a voice. http://blindcarboncopy.org/

Rudovska have worked extensively in the Baltic-Nordic region, as well as internationally. Close collaborations include: Contemporary Art Centre (LV), Moderna Museet (SE), Rupert (LT), Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius (LT), The Living Art Museum (IS), HIAP (FI), among many others.

Image 1: The Primal Shelter is the Site for Primal Fears (2016). Exhibition view. Photo: Vigfús Birgisson, courtesy The Living Art Museum.

Image 2: Society Acts - Version 2. After Moderna Exhibition 2014 (2015). Exhibition view. Photo: Ansis Starks, courtesy kim? Contemporary Art Centre

Image 3: Image of Blind Carbon Copy website, design by Nerijus Rimkus

Mallika Roy

Mallika Roy (b. 1991, Chicago, USA) is a diasporic artist who facilitates open sites of creative education. Her guiding belief is that alternative communications for, amongst, and on behalf of dispossessed and alienated peoples can serve to disrupt and re-imagine the political economy. She synthesizes critical theory, art, ethnographies, and other research and presents them in publicly accessible forms like websites, graphic design, fashion and adornment, curriculum, workshops, and social media.

Mallika’s framework for understanding social change has been primarily informed by her BA in International Studies and Urban Studies from the University of Michigan, the Center for Political Education’s community course on Marxist thought, Movement Generation’s A Just Transition Zine, and her upbringing in Eastern philosophy. Her work is constantly challenged and reinvigorated by the youth she has partnered with in Detroit and San Francisco since 2012.

Aleyda Rocha

Based in Mexico, Aleyda Rocha's practice is focuses on data ethnography, social impact design and educational technology. She is interested in how to understand, think about, and interact with data - particularly, how we can make data experiences that are aesthetic, tangible and consider all of our senses.

Rocha graduated from Monterrey Center for Higher Learning of Design’s Digital Art Program. She currently researching how safety policies and violent events influence gender identity and garment in Mexico. The project traces how, from the post-revolution war, the identity of Mexican men have been dictated by the constant state of ferocity.

She is a founding member of RevoltosasMX – a non-profit dedicated to generate speeches and narratives that challenge the existing power dynamics at workplace in order to push forward gender equality in Mexico.

Identifying as a curious wanderer, Rocha has navigated industries including technology, advertising and public sector innovation. She spent two years as Creative Program Manager at Google, developing groundbreaking digital projects in Latin America with the goal of leveraging the power of technology for both users and brands.

Catriona Robertson

Catriona Robertson is a sculptor based in London. She holds a BAFA (Hons) from Central Saint Martins, London (2010) and forthcoming MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London (2019). Catriona also works as a Technician in 3D fabrication at Central Saint Martins, London teaching students at Foundation, BA and MA level.

The making and un-making process is an integral part of her sculpture, working with constructive materials and some found objects to create sculptural assemblages that have an architectural resemblance with a raw sense of formation. Drawing from the in-between moment that may be overlooked at first glance, her work evokes performativity in a solid form; the potential state in which there is an element of chance or possible destruction. Her sculptures create an opposition of material and surface – forming tension and fragility, whilst questioning the permanence of the material against traditional sculptural practices.

Catriona was recently artist-in-residence at the Merz Barn, Elterwater, UK and co-ordinated a summer residency programme for Royal College of Art Students in July 2018. In 2015 she was awarded the REFRESH grant by Central Saint Martins for an artist residency in Onishi, Japan at Shiro Oni Studio, as well as artist-in-residence at Liebig 12, Berlin from December 2011-February 2012.

Catriona has exhibited at: the Merz Barn, Elterwater, England, (July 2018), the Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art Kensington, London, (June 2018), ‘WIP Show’ at the Sculpture Building, Royal College of Art, Battersea, London (January 2018), and at the Futuro House, SafeHouse London (February 2016) and Central Saint Martins, Kings Cross London (January 2016). As well as international exhibitions at the Galeri Mejan, Skeppsholmen, Stockholm (August 2016), the Futuro House, exhibition during artist residency in Onishi, Shiro Oni studios Gunma prefecture at the civic Centre, Onishi, Japan (July-August 2015) and was further selected for the ‘Kanna Art Festival’ selected Shiro Oni artists, Fujioka Gunma prefecture, Japan (September 2015).

Image 1. Connected – 2016. Exhibition at SafeHouse, Peckham, London.

Image 2. Un-Monument 2018 , Royal College of Art Battersea, London. Concrete, steel, resin, polyurethane, plywood, plaster, acrylic.  50 x 70 x 410 cm.

Image 3. Moulded 2017, Concrete, plaster, thistle, plywood. 78 x 42 x 30 cm.

Image 4. Merzsaüle 2018, Merz Barn Elterwater, Langdale England. On show until October 2018.  Concrete, slate, slate clay, plaster, plywood, found objects (steel, newspaper, rope, card, plastics).

Belić, Westerlund and Müller

Working collectivly Belić, Westerlund and Müller work with structures of relationships and varying forms of acts of imitation. They develop performative works through a process of learning from internet sources. 

Maria Gordana Belić received her BA in Fine Arts from Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway and her MA degree in Fine Arts from Valand Academy of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her practice uses inter-biographical stories, meetings or events which become magnetic mantras, where companions, nervous technique or collaborations modify the narrative. Things are repeated, looped and multiplied through various formats. She is fascinated by structures around support and what it means to struggle with personal problems in pubic.

Per Westerlund works with animation depicting sensational bliss using Windows Paint. While the angular shapes of the medium resist painterliness he uses the movement of the images and coloring to create impassioned effects. Recurring motives include naked skin, wind and sun light, and images sometimes paraphrase stereotypes from the romantic era. The rhythmic feature of the animations has recently led him to work with music videos. He graduated from Oslo Academy of Fine Art in 2013.

Daniela Müller studied Media Arts at the Zurich University of the Arts and Fine Arts at the Academy of the Arts in Oslo, Norway, completing her MA in Fine Arts at the Zurich University of the Arts in 2013. From 2012-15 she curated the ad-hoc gallery “One Night Only Zurich”. Müller's practice employs acts of appropriation to examine the purposeful conditions of language. She copies, loops and recontextualises mundane material, such as commercial signs, leaked pictures, spam mails and prophecies, leading toe moving images, installations and collaborations.

Vika Adutova

Vika Adutova's artistic practice is rooted in the research of language and perception. Vika uses video, sound, drawing, and sculpture, working primarily with the subject of the affect of time on human and non-human life, and language as the tool of description.

Born in Tashkent and previously based in New York, Adutova is currently living and studying in Oslo, and is an MFA candidate from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts due to graduate in 2018.

Eva Funk

Eva Funk is an Austrian artist and writer based in Berlin. She was educated at the Berlin University of the Arts and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Her recent practice makes use of repetitive motifs across different contexts, building up large scale installations with performative interventions in the investigation of relationships between objects, language and spirit often in relation to notions of failure.

Funk works with physical bodies (of people and objects), as well as writing. She has self-published artist writings under rotato press, and is interested in the book as an alternative to the exhibition. Funk has exhibited and performed in Austria, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland and Canada.

Araiz Mesanza

Araiz Mesanza is an artist and illustrator whose work is mainly developed through drawings. She holds an MFA in Fine Art from the Basque University (Bilbao, Spain) and specialized in illustration at Escola Massana (Barcelona, Spain).

Mesanza has worked as a freelance illustrator since 2009 and in 2011 she co-founded Ediciones Armadillo, an artist collective and publishing outlet releasing an annual collaborative illustration fanzine and other projects. Having relocated to Oslo in autumn of 2016 (currently working from VORTA atelier at Middelalderparken), Mesanza's recent work has largely focused on producing "introspective landscapes" that explore her relationship with her new surroundings.

Tyler Matthew Oyer

Called an "interdisciplinary gospel immortalist" by Kembra Pfahler of the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, Tyler Matthew Oyer is an artist, writer, organizer, and educator based in Los Angeles. By researching diverse modalities of activism (ACT UP, queer theatre, Brechtian theatre, surrealism, underground cabaret, and punk) his performance works generate an intergenerational dialogue around politics, seeking new ways of articulating the connection between various systems of oppression from the past to the present in an attempt to grapple with our collective political future.

Oyer has performed at MoMA PS1, REDCAT, The Getty Museum, dOCUMENTA (13), Hammer Museum, Kunstnernes Hus Oslo, Munch Museum, Art Basel Miami Beach, Bergen Kunstall, Rogaland Kunstsenter, The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, High Desert Test Sites, Highways Performance Space, Human Resources LA, Silencio Paris, MIX NYC, and the Orange County Museum of Art. He has written works of performance including CALLING ALL DIVAS, GONE FOR GOLD, Shimmy Shake Earthquake, La Bola Negra, and 100 Years of Noise: Beyoncé is ready to receive you now. Oyer is the founder of tir journal, an online platform for queer, feminist, and underrepresented voices. He received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2012 and has offered workshops and lectures at CalArts, Bard College, Occidental College, University of Southern California Santa Barbara, Penn State University, Southern Exposure, and Grand Central Art Center. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (NY), Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, and Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona.

Jeremy Olson

Jeremy Olson is an American artist working with painting, video, sculpture and photography. These practices are thematically linked by an interest in animist objects and the way images shape desire. His references range from the commercial still-life to science fiction, often utilizing small assemblages or dioramas as points of departure.

Born in Ojai, CA., he attended the University of Arizona as an undergraduate, and received his MFA from New York University. His work has been exhibited in New York as well as Antwerp, Baltimore, Berlin, Melbourne, and Seoul. He has participated in residency programs in Florida, New York, Nebraska, and Michigan.

Alexandra Neuman

Alexandra Neuman is an interdisciplinary reptile currently based in San Diego, California. Drawing on elements from new materialism and multi-species feminism, her work focuses on perforating the identity of "human" by reshuffling naturalized systems of classification.

She received a BFA in Visual Arts and Anthropology from Sam Fox School of Art at Washington University in St. Louis and is currently pursuing an MFA in Visual Arts at University of California, San Diego. She is a past participant of the Arteles Residency in Haukijarvi, Finland and the Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art in Berlin. Her films have shown at Anthology Film Archives, Museum of the Moving Image, and the Eyeslicer. She is a Webby Award Honoree as well as the recent recipient of the Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences (IDEAS) grant at Calit2. 

Kristin Nango

Kristin Nango (1976) is a butohdancer, performance artist, therapist and with a special interest in the bodily and philosophical approach to materiality and experience. Her works operates in the field of movement, dance and performance and are often inspired by the human relationship to nature and to the «non- human». She is currently based in Oslo where she is frequently giving workshops in poetic movement and operates as an artist in the collective Oslo Butohlaboratorium in which she is one of the founders and core members.

Magnus Myrtveit

Magnus Myrtveit studied BA Fine Art at the Oslo Academy of Fine Art, his current work searches for deeper meaning in the act of browsing the internet and juxtaposes “cutting edge” technology with primitive techniques of making art in the consideration of ideas of impermanence in technology.

Matthew Musgrave

Matthew Musgrave (b. 1985 UK) lives and works in London, is interested in a kind of thinking through painting, how painting has a tendency to figure and to abstract, how it meanders and wanders, continually merges the past into the present on and on. Things often begin with something close to hand, a chair, limb, some grass or foliage, a tree, window, weather, something seen or remembered, moving paint around until something begins to make some sort of sense.

He studied painting at the Royal College of Art (2011) and Chelsea College of Art (2008). Exhibitions include: The Value of Liveliness, White Crypt, London (2018); Pink Density, Clovis XV, Brussels (2016), Only with a light touch will you write well, freely and fast, David Dale Gallery, Glasgow (2015) & Supplement, London (2016); All the best/yours sincerely, Galeria Alegria, Madrid (2016); To Paint a Line, Maki Fine Arts, Tokyo (2015); Around, Supplement, London, (2014); Head to Head, Standpoint, London (2014); Paintings, Supplement, London (2012); The Milkplus Bar, Josh Liley Gallery, London, (2010); The Library of Babel, Zabludowicz Collection, London, (2010); Jerwood Contemporary Painters, Jerwood Gallery, London (2009).

Image 1: 'Setting Out', 2016, Oil on linen, 40.5x35.5cm

Image 2: 'The Eyes Have It' installation shot, 2016, 53 Beck Road, London

Image 3: 'Of a Bush', 2012, Oil on linen, 25x20cm

Image 4: 'Around' installation shot, 2014, Supplement Gallery, London

Ebba Moi

Ebba Moi's artistic practice relates to the public domain with a community based, participatory approach. Her concerns include the use of democratic space and the management of people's rights and needs. Moi works with installation, sound, performance, curating and dialogue- based art projects, primarily targeting young people across cultures. Moi is currently co-running artist run space Tenthaus Oslo together with artists Helen Eriksen and Stefan Schröder.

hedbergmoi.net

Mia Melvær

Mia Melvær (b. 1988, NO) is a visual artist based between Belgium and Norway. She holds a BA in design from Design Academy Eindhoven (2012). Her work oscillates between sculpture and archival research, the personal and the collective.

Melvær has exhibited at Bozar, Brussel; Pianofabriek, Brussel; esc Medien Kunst Labor, Graz; Kunsthalle Bern, Bern; Hönnunarmiðstöð Íslands, Reykjavik, among others. She is a co-founder of the feminist collective Just for the Record, a permanent contributor to Mothers & Daughters – a lesbian and trans bar, and has written for a number of publications.

Patrick McElnea

Patrick McElnea (b. 1981) is based in Los Angeles, California. His work uses pigment, pixilation, and phrasing to visualize imaginations that underpin culture. Recent photographs forage through fantasies of selfhood, inheritance, and flesh. Pictures are made in pairs; the same scene fabricated in different materials, like short stories told in separate languages. McElnea’s video projects similarly explore how images are collaboratively made or misinterpreted under institutional care such as preventative medicine, primary education, and art therapy. He has had solo exhibitions at Ortega y Gasset Projects in New York, and Daniel Weinburg Gallery in Los Angeles. He earned his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University in 2008 and his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2004.

Image 1: Alone In the Vault, 13 x 22.5 inches, archival pigment print, 2019
Image 2: Older Brother, 19 x 26.5 inches, archival pigment print, 2018
Image 3: His Brother, 25 x 36 inches, archival pigment print, 2018

Image 4: Translantic, 63 x 95 inches, archival pigment print, 2018

Image 5: Jan's Shorts, 15 x 21.5 inches, archival pigment print, 2018