Studio artists 2022-2023

Working across sculpture and installation, Annalise is interested in residuals, processes and means that have a propensity for precarity within systems associated with consumption. Alluding to bodily and socio-economic anxieties and imaginaries, Annalise likes to play with physical and psychological manifestations that imbue a conflicting sense of optimism and apprehension. As such, she avoids reworking materials into stringent structures, but relies on fragility and the suffusion of the ordinary with the fantastical as tools to pick away at assurances related to objects or systems.

Her current interests centres around concretions or stones that are formed in human and animal tissue that were historically considered to be either irritants of a non-terrestrial kind or as a cure for all ills respectively. She is interested in how these notions can be pertinent to our present time as symptoms of excess and deficiency, as a source of capital, and as a Randian anthropomorphized object.

Read more on annalisewimmer.com.

Ana Marques Engh (b. 1993) is a failing inventor. She makes dysfunctional robots that express difficult emotions through simple actions and tries to solve emotional problems with tools she makes herself with technology, with alternating success. She's working to find her own way of doing things without conforming to the rules and expectations linked to the materials and knowledge she has at hand.

Ana's works can at the moment be sorted into three categories: the works that are based on using technology in the physical realm often using the technology in non-technologic ways, the works that use technology in a more abstract virtual realm where the work is both art and an interactive usable tool, and lastly the works that do not involve technology but that also work on themes relating to feelings, identity, actions and movement.

Read more on anamarquesengh.com.

Is the tomato a vegetable, a fruit or a berry? Does it matter? Eli Mai Huang Nesse is interested in the ambiguous and contradictory, not knowing if something is sad or funny, good or bad. She investigates what lies in-between opposites and wants to make the feeling of ambivalence linger. Her work takes shape through the use of storytelling, film, performance and installations. With humor and a concise language, Eli talks about topics like identity, class and climate issues. The recent video work Tusen takk (2021) for instance is about the unwanted gift, how something meant to spread joy can become a burden.

Eli is an artist based in Oslo. She holds a bachelor degree from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, with an exchange to the Art Academy in Bergen and a master degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo. She has had solo shows at Galleri Slakt (Bergen), K4 (Oslo) Galleri Blunk (Trondheim) and participated in several group shows including R1 Reaktorhallen (Stockholm), ABF-huset (Stockholm) and the Autumn Exhibition at Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo). Additionally, she works as a scenographer and has been part of the theatre performance collaboration Taking Root with Hamid Waheed, Kim Reenskaug and Vilde Jensen that has performed at Open Out (Tromsø) and Meteor International Theatre Festival (Bergen). She has also created the scenography for the play Sukker, directed and written by Linda Gathu and shown at Bergen Dramatikkfestival.

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Joel Billekvist (b. 1992, Sweden) lives in Oslo and has recently graduated from the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts. In 2021, he has exhibited at Podium, Kösk, Hos Arne and Coulisse gallery. In his current praxis, Billekvist is investigating how to define the front and back of a painting. Materials such as high-tech, ripstop and transparent textiles are used as an unconventional canvas. His interest in stenter frames and textiles as part of the manifestation of a painting as a physical object has emerged through projects such as Soft On Soft, where Billekvist worked with soft oil chalk on transparent netting. The permeability of the material allows the viewer to see the contours of the stenter frame like a skeleton under thin skin. The works thus challenge the boundary between front and back, interior and exterior, and transcend the two-dimensionality of painting as a medium.

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Hamid Waheed is a filmmaker and visual artist utilizing moving images, as well as writing and performing. His work often emphasizes characterization, dramaturgy and queer desires as methods of investigating psycho-social structures, ruminating on time, intimacies and violence. He is also interested in histories and the materialities of archived data. He has an MFA from Oslo National Academy of the Arts, a BFA in Moving Images from Nordland School of Arts and Film and is part of the curatorial collective HÆRK.

His works have been presented a number of places, including the Museum of Cultural History, Fotogalleriet and Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo); Open Out Festival and Tromsø Kunstforening (Tromsø); Meteor International Theatre Festival and KODE (Bergen); Nikolaj Kunsthal and Den Frie Udstillingsbygning (Copenhagen); Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin. In 2020 he won the Critic Prize at Nordnorsken for the installation video Papegøye.

Read more on verbalkunstfilm.com or follow Hamid on Instagram.

Lesia Vasylchenko (born in Kyiv, Ukraine based in Oslo, Norway) works across a range of media including video, photography and installation. Vasylchenko is a co-curator of the artist-run gallery space Podium and founder of STRUKTURA. Time, a cross-disciplinary initiative for research and practice within the framework of visual arts, media archaeology, literature, and philosophy. She holds a degree in Journalism from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and a degree in Fine Arts from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Vasylchenko have been shown among others at Louvre Museum, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Haugar Art Museum, Tønsberg and The Wrong New Digital Art Biennale.

Read more on lesiavasylchenko.com.

Makda Embaie (b. 1994) is an artist and poet with sound, text, film and installations as her primary mediums. The works deal with the question of what language is if we practice it as a specific experience rather than a property of the nation state. She formulates a set of conditions an imagined community may have experienced, such as having been subject to the mother tongue classes in Sweden, which children with at least one parent with origin from outside of Sweden have been subject to. In this context language belongs to the nation state, and therefore ignores the very complex way that language functions. Someone from a different country does not acquire language in the way the nation states impose on people. Norwegian is not "natural" to Norway as there are many other languages within the territory – but its name suggests Norwegian as more legitimate than, for example, Sami, Romani or Tigrigna. Because the nation state’s survival depends on people performing and conforming to its way of insisting borders, it is one of the central concepts in Embaie’s practice.

Makda Embaie studied at Biskop Arnö's writer's school and took a post-master's degree in Decolonizing architecture at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm (2019). She has a bachelor's degree from Konstfack, Stockholm (2020) and an MFA from the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts (2022). She has participated in exhibitions at Tensta Konsthall, Radio Cyklopen, Medborgarhuset in Hägerstensåsen, Center for Photography and Stockholms Kvinnohistoriska (Stockholm), Kunstnernes Hus and Bananaz (Oslo), aerial and the festival Borealis (Bergen) and Konsthallen Blå Stället (Gothenburg).

Click here to get in touch with Makda or follow her on Instagram.

What is the shape of that which cannot be contained? Patricia Carolina is an artist working with that question through kinetic sculpture, installations with water and video, weaving, and drawing. Her studio practice deals with leakages, gaps, and porous surfaces; she sees them as alternatives to closed and static structures, but also as lively holders of experiences and information.

Born and raised in Mexico, Oslo-based Patricia graduated from the Iceland University of the Arts (BA 2019), and at Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo (MFA 2022). Her work has been recently included in exhibitions in Norway and abroad, amongst them Taiteen talo in Turku and The Living Art Museum, Y Gallery, Midpunkt, Ásmundasalur, and the Nordic House in Reykjavík.

Read more on patriciacarolina.com or follow Patricia on Instagram.