Noor Abed (b. 1988 Jerusalem) is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker. Her practice examines notions of choreography and the imaginary relationship of individuals, creating situations where social possibilities are both rehearsed and performed. In 2020, she co-founded, with Lara Khaldi, the “School of Intrusions,” an educational platform in Ramallah, Palestine.
Mira Adoumier (b. 1985, New York) is an Oslo-based Lebanese/French filmmaker Through her work with fictional short films and film essays, she explored characters living at the margins of in-between worlds, while also in parallel experimenting with the formal aspect of the image. Her first feature film, ERRANS premiered at CPH:DOX 2020 in the next:wave ينملكفا competition. She is part of the Camelia Committee ( ا†ا†), a collective that explores hybrid forms of writing for and in cinema.
Ayman al Azraq is a filmmaker, photographer, and mixed-media artist. His short film The Passport has been screened at prestigious venues such as the National Museum of Cinema in Turin, Italy, and the Cologne International VideoArt Festival in Germany. In 2015, Ayman’s short film Oslo Syndrome was showcased at the Autumn Exhibition in Oslo, the Dubai International Film Festival, and the London Palestinian Film Festival. Ayman’s documentary film Into My Lungs delves into the harsh working conditions in Bangladesh’s textile industry. It was screened at Kunstnernes Hus in 2022. His mixed media installation, The Lost Tapes of a People’s Tribunal 1982, was exhibited at Fotogalleriet in Oslo during the 2023/2024 season.
Haig Aivazian is an artist living in Beirut. Working across a range of media and modes of address, he delves into the ways in which power embeds, affects and moves people, objects, animals, landscape and architecture. Between 2020-2022, Aivazian was Artistic Director of the Beirut Art Center where he was founding editor of thederivative.org.
Khalid Albaih is a Sudanese award-winning artist, political cartoonist and cultural producer based between Doha and Oslo. besides his two books KHARTOON! and Sudan Retold, he publishes his political cartoons and political commentary on current affairs on various established media outlets, publications and books. Khalid is the founder of award-winning space sharing platform getfadaa.com, Sudan Art and Design, Sudan Artist Fund and the fashion blog focusing on migrant workers in Doha @DohaFashionFridays and Khartoonmag.com a political cartoons and comics online magazine.
Bojana Cvejic is an Oslo-based dramaturg and researcher, and her writing, performances and videos interweave performance matters and critical theory. Before she came to teach Dance Theory at KhiO, she was mainly engaged in collective platforms for self-organized work and self-education, including Performing Arts Forum (www.pa-f.net, St. Erme, France).
Ingri Midgard Fiksdal is a choreographer based in Oslo, Norway. She holds a PhD in artistic research from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts titled Affective Choreographies (2019). Ingri’s work on affect has in recent years taken her into discourses on perspective and privilege. Ingri is concerned with how practice and theory are entangled in her work in a way where neither is perceived as anterior to the other.
Dora García is an artist, teacher and researcher who lives and works in Oslo. Dora García sculpts and arranges knowledge as a material in its own right. Using extensive documentary research, she delves into complex topics such as the history of the irrational, subconscious mind, and forges links with the great names in literature – including Walser, Artaud and Joyce. The oeuvre of Dora García folds up into writing, film, installation, and performance, as is centered around stories which she organizes and stages, conjuring situations designed to engage the visitor and trigger unique, introspective experiences.
Mia Habib is an Oslo-based dancer, performer and choreographer working at the intersection of performance, exhibitions, publications, lectures, teaching, mentoring and curating always guided by a choreographic logic. Her work is described to hold a culture critical perspective on body, identity, society and dance.
Rana Issa is the artistic director of Masahat, an arts and culture organization and festival in Oslo. She is a curator, writer and translator focusing on literary and contemporary artistic practices entangled with Arabic cultural history. She works at the intersection between public humanities, activist engagements, and academic curiosity. Rana is the author of The Modern Arabic Bible (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) and Tung tids tale (Press Forlag, 2025).
Sami Khatib’s work spans the fields of Aesthetic Theory, Critical Theory, Media Theory and Cultural Studies with a special focus on the thought of Walter Benjamin. His area of competence is in 19th and 20th century Continental Philosophy with an emphasis on early Frankfurt School, Kant, German Idealism, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud and post-Structuralism. He is author of a book on Walter Benjamin (Marburg: Tectum, 2013); an English translation, titled “'Teleology without End.' Walter Benjamin’s Dislocation of the Messianic,” is forthcoming.
Jumana Manna is a visual artist and filmmaker. Her work explores how power is articulated, focusing on the body, land and materiality in relation to colonial inheritances and histories of place. Through sculpture, filmmaking, and occasional writing, Manna deals with the paradoxes of preservation practices, particularly within the fields of architecture, agriculture and law. Her practice considers the tension between the modernist traditions of categorisation and conservation and the unruliness of ruination, life and its regeneration. Jumana was raised in Jerusalem and lives in Berlin.
Helle Siljeholm is a choreographer and visual artist, based in Oslo. She holds a BA (hons.) from London Contemporary Dance School in 2003. In 2016, she graduated with an MA in Fine Art from the Oslo Academy of Fine Art (KHiO). Her artistic practice involves film, installation, sculpture, choreography, and performance.
Islam Shabana’s work is situated in the intersection of technology with Islamic philosophy, mythology and studies of human cognition. In his works, he explores concepts such as system-social dynamics, religious performative rituals and occult practices, by means of poetry, simulation, science fiction and speculative scenarios. Examining how different technologies are interweaving these concepts producing/reproducing entangling structures between myth, fiction, and physical realities.
Helga Tawil-Souri works on technology, media, culture, territory and politics in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Palestine. Helga is co-editor with Dina Matar of Gaza as Metaphor (Hurst 2016) and Producing Palestine (Bloomsbury 2024), and currently serves on the editorial boards of Social Text and Public Culture. She has published a wide range of articles and chapters on checkpoints, borders, infrastructure, media and telecom, surveillance, and other topics, and has been experimenting with collage and visual forms of expression.
Nikhil Vettukattil (b. 1990, Bengaluru, India) is an artist and 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.
