For the release the following artists and writers will read for us:

Camara Lundestad Joof
Grethe-Charina Bagirov
Agatha Wara
Nikhil Vettukattil
Elina Waage Mikalsen
Nina Bahar

Agatha Wara is an artist born in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, living and working in Oslo. She studied at the Center for Curatorial Studies in New York, USA and the National Academy of the Arts in Oslo, Norway. She is one of four daughters of an ex-diplomatic father and a dry-cleaner owner mother who fled to the United States as economic refugees due to Bolivian economic hyperinflation of 1985. In her work, she often centers on clothing, performance, and writing, lifting details from her own real or imagined biography. Wara has presented projects for a variety of institutions and contexts. Recent projects were shown at WIELS Project Room, Etablissement d'en face, both in Brussels, Shoot the Lobster in Los Angeles, and Centralbanken in Oslo. She has also presented projects at Norwegian Sculpture Biennial, CHART Art fair (Copenhagen), Pure Fyction Art Book Fair (Frankfurt), NADA Art Fair (NY), Red Bull Studios (NY), Dismagazine.com (NY), Art Basel (Miami), and Institute of Contemporary Art (Miami). In 2022 she will publish her debut novel as part of the inaugural exhibition of the National Museum in Oslo, and also run an exhibition space from her 2001 Mercedes-Benz S-Class.

Nikhil Vettukattil is an artist and a writer based in Oslo. Using a range of media such as sound, installation, performance, text, sculpture, and video, his practice questions modes of representation and image-making processes in their relation to lived experiences. He has previously exhibited at venues such as K4 Galleri, Oslo (2021), Louise Dany, Oslo (2020), EKA Gallery, Tallinn (2020), Kristiansand Kunsthall (2020) and Le Bourgeois, London (2019). He is an associate artist at Black Box Teater and part of the art collectives Tenthaus and Carrie, as well as a studio artist at Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo. Forthcoming exhibitions include CAPC, Bordeaux (2021), K-U-K, Trondheim (2021), Kunsthall Oslo (2022), and the Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo (2022).

Camara Lundestad Joof is a Norwegian-Gambian performing artist, writer and playwright. Her work is mainly documentary and focuses on intersectionality, norm criticism and decolonialization. In 2018 she published the book Eg snakkar om det heile tida, and from 2020 she is a house playwright at the National Theatre in Oslo. Her play De må føde oss eller pule oss for å elske oss is premiering this fall.

Elina Waage Mikalsen is a multidisciplinary artist and musician from Romssa/Tromsø, currently living in Oslo. She works with performance, textiles, installation and text, very often connected to sound and sound-practice. Mikalsen completed her BA in visual arts at the Academy in Tromsø / Nordland School of Art and Film in 2017, and in the spring of 2021 finished her MFA at the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo. In 2015, Mikalsen was named ‘Young Artist of the Year’ at the international indigenous festival Riddu Riđđu, and she has since participated in a number of group exhibitions and performance programs. Her background is both Sámi and Norwegian, and this is a recurring theme in her artistic practice. This encounter between the Sámi and the Norwegian within her own family has become an illustration of the power relations haunting the Norwegian society as a whole. This intimate, familiar view on a societal issue is now the platform where she explore themes connected to identity and structural alienating.

Grethe-Charina Bagirov was born in Trondheim. She is educated from Forfatterstudiet in Bø and Skrivekunstakademiet in Hordaland. She is currently living in Oslo, where she studies psychology. She is affiliated with the magazine Beijing Trondheim and writes poetry.

Nina Bahar er skribent og aktivist, og hun er utdannet fra Norsk barnebokinstitutt. For tiden er hun bosatt i Oslo og arbeider på to barnebøker og en sakprosabok for voksne.