Milenasong

As a former student of art & sound, it felt only natural for Milenasong to start painting with musical layering. Ten years ago she released her debut album, SEVEN SISTERS on Gudrun Gut's label Monika Enterprise in Germany.

Touring and meeting interesting artists from all corners greatly enriched her perspectives and process and in interviews she liked to say how much she wanted to break open rules in song-making. Motherhood and ill health temporarily rerouted her focus and her steps have been slower since. Since 2011 she has been working on her next album, started in London, with finishing touches added at Bauteil3 in Berlin, she is developing the end-mix herself in Oslo in 2017. It is a work on shadow-walk and transformation, the things that cannot be controlled, yet ultimately will find its resolution/dissolving in time.

Milenasong also works with illustration, currently fine lining for the newspaper Ny Tid and working on experimental audiobooks for Cappelen Damm/Storytel. Her current waves: Allowing things to be what they are, cooperating with given health, talents and the likeminded, for possibilities to take shape.

Nanna Melland

Nanna Melland (b. 1969) is a diploma and Meister student from the Academy of the Fine Arts in Munich. She received a Candidata Magister degree from the University of Oslo in Social Anthropology and History of Religion and is a journeyman in goldsmithing. In 2017 Melland was a guest professor at Burg Giebichenstein in Halle, Germany and is now based in Oslo, Norway. In 2008 Melland received the Norwegian Craft main prize. Melland works in different materials, and a wide variety of subjects. Intrauterine-Devices (IUDs); nails in gold; cast pigs’ hearts; orchids in lead; aluminum airplanes; miniature atomic bomb ring in tin; sculptures in beeswax and brooches from Polypore Fungus thus achieving – albeit paradoxically – a coherent whole.

Her work is represented in Nordenfjeldske Arts and Crafts Museum in Trondheim, Norway. Melland has taken part in many groups and solo exhibitions in museum and galleries around the world, like the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, The Schmuck Fair, the Museum of Modern Art in Arnhem, The Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Jewellery Museum in Pforzheim, New York Museum of Arts and Design and The Dowse Art Museum in New Zealand.

Michael McLoughlin

Michael McLoughlin is an artist and researcher from Dublin who makes audiowork, drawings, sculptural objects, video and installations. His artistic approach endeavors to presents an outlet for dialogue/exchange and explores the physicality of places where, and the manner in which, people interact. 

Since the mid-1990s Michael McLoughlin has consistently developed and presented new ways of making contemporary artwork in social contexts. Within the last year he has made site specific audio work in Limerick (Cumann:An Audio Map of Limerick, Limerick City Gallery of Art), Drogheda (Cumann, Droichead Art Centre, & as part of Beyond the Pale, Highlanes) and in Dublin (Rest Here, UCD Sutherland School of Law & Ocean Wonder Resort Revelations, Portrane). His artists book of drawings, I am here because I know you will be too was published by Dublin City Council in 2014.

McLoughlin has been Artist in Residence in Draiocht Arts Centre, Blanchardstown (2017), and at UCD College of Social Science & Law in 2015, where he has since begun a critical social and institutional analysis of ethics, art-making and knowledge production in the contexts of social practice in the School of Sociology.

Evgeniya Martirosyan

Evgeniya Martirosyan is an artist based in Ireland with a background in philosophy and design. She graduated from the Crawford College of Art and Design in 2016, receiving a number of residencies and exhibition awards, including residencies at National Sculpture Factory and Sample Studios, Ireland and an exhibition award at Cork Film Centre. Her most recent work has been shown at 126 Gallery, Galway Arts Festival, Ireland; Leeds Digital Festival, UK ; and TACTIC Gallery, Ireland.

Working primarily in the mediums of sculpture and installation, Martirosyan is interested in exploring the concepts of time, matter, chaos and transformation. She builds complex dynamic structures and uses transient organic matter, reflecting on the poetic possibilities of the fluid and constantly shifting state of things.

Image 1: The Shape of Emptiness, 2017. Metal, air compressor, silicone tubing, water, washing up liquid, plastic, timer. Photo: Jed Niezgoda.

Image 2: Between Something and Nothing, 2017. Refrigeration system, acrylic, copper piping, metal tray, timer. Photo: Jed Niezgoda.

Image 3: Dream Machine, 2017. Metal, plastic, acrylic tubing, corn syrup, led light. Photo: Jed Niezgoda.

Image 4: Your Quantum Uncertainty, 2016. Metal, water, water pump, tubing, wood, live projection.

Martirosyan's participation in residency eleven, Monumental—Temporal has been made possible due to kind support from the Arts Council of Ireland Travel and Training Award.

Claudia Mann

Claudia Mann is a sculptor whose work is process oriented and conceptual. She also resorts to other media in her work, e.g. video, photography and language which serve as mirrors reflecting her sculptural works. 

"Outer space is just as relevant for me as the centre of the earth. We are space. In order to comprehend the dimensions of space right up to the centre of the earth one should be fully aware of the fact that the ground only seems to be an impenetrable surface. However, it consists of air as well as material. Ground is a very self-centred version of what in fact is only material. That is why it is a component of the definition of ‘horizon’. It stretches to the horizon. One’s location starting with the feet, eye level and then what one sees is all physically dependent on this. (…) 

The ground is the starting of sculpture and the sculpture itself. But the human entity is and remains the reference. In the past I used to move and work above this ‘surface’. By means of various processes the necessity arose to break through it and to perceive it. What exactly is the ground? Where does it begin and where does it end? To perceive something and then to clearly accept it for what it is a form of appropriation. Not merely the wish to hold onto a thought but to own its equivalent made of matter. Air is just as much matter, we are matter. Perception means using the senses. However most of the time we use our senses unconsciously. It is interesting to become aware of one’s own senses."

Image 1: Aero, 2016. Resin, metall, soil, sand 205 x 140 x 217 cm.
Photo: Ivo Faber, VG Bild-Kunst Bonn De Statua, KIT Düsseldorf.

Image 2: SOLID AERO, 2017. Inkjet print.
Photo: Claudia Mann, VG-Bild Kunst, Bonn.

Image 3: Cast, 2016. Resin, metal, 260 x 320 x 120 cm.
Photo: Dejan Saric, Kunstraum Düsseldorf Förderpreisträger 2016.

Image 4: Tombé.Tambour, 2016. Tarred board, resin, grass, wood, 205 x 621 x 621 cm. New Talents Biennale 2016, Poststrasse, Cologne

Shahrzad Malekian

Shahrzad Malekian (1983/ Iran) is an interdisciplinary artist working with video, performance and sculpture. Malekian’s works often address the human conditions she experiences around her. Her interests include power structures, presentations of gender, the complexity of interpersonal relationships, and shifts that occur in the transition between the private and public domains.

Her works have been shown internationally in group exhibitions in Brazil, USA, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland and London. Her video piece was selected for International Film Festival Rotterdam and Göteborg International Film Festival in Jan 2013. She was the finalist for MOP CAP 2015 prize.

Malekian holds a BFA in Sculpture from the Art University of Tehran and is a current MFA Art and Public Space candidate at Kunsthøgskolen I Oslo, Norway. She lives and works in Oslo and Tehran.

Image 1: WARDROBE MEMORIES, Performance, Sommerøya Festival, 2018
Image 2: WARDROBE MEMORIES, Performance, Sommerøya Festival, 2018
Image 3: URBAN EXPERIENCES, Public Intervention, 2015
Image 4: MAKEUP EXPERIMENTS: LIPSTICK, Video Performance, 2013

Sebastian Makonnen Kjølaas & Siri Hjorth

Siri Hjorth (1986)  and Sebastian Makonnen Kjølaas (1985) are two contemporary artists accomplishing high performance, premium, award-winning works that are safe, healthy, and certified sustainable.

When Kjølaas and Hjorth first got married in the Emanuel Vigeland Mausoleum in 2016 - they had already been working closely on a series of artistic projects since 2009. They now live and work in Oslo. Their artistic output include ceramics, textile, watercolours, latex and eggs.

Hjorth recently had her solo show “Looner Mooner" at Nebbelux in 2016, and participated in the production of “From Butter to Margarin” in 2017, directed by Pernille Lindstad and organised by “Munchmuseet on the Move” at Gallery 1857 in Oslo. She works with textile, costume and performance, and generates an unpredictable and sneaky world - disturbingly erotic. She opened the National Gallery's new Middle East Wing with a performativ staging of the painting “Marriage in Hardanger” by Tidemann and Gude. Hjorth has shown her work at the Black Box Theatre, Kunstnernes Hus, and Kunsthaus KULE in Berlin. Graduated with a Bachelor in Visual Arts from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2014.

In 2015 Kjølaas won the Debutant Prize at the Autumn State Exhibition. He has toured the country since 2016 with his solo show “On dry things” showcased at different Art Societies around Norway, including Hammerfest, Eidsberg, Haugesund, Volda and Trondheim. He is the artist and author behind “The Institute of Art and Crime” (2014) published by Torpedo Press. Graduated in 2012 with a Master in Visual Arts from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

In addition to their praxis both Kjølaas and Hjorth hold positions at Prosjektskolen Art School, as Prorector and teacher. Together they have started the artist run spaces GAGO between 2009 - 2011, and SALT between 2011-2013. With Marianne Bredesen they have developed the project “Wittgenstein on Vacation” (2015 - 2019) supported by KORO, Art in Public Space Norway.

Nondumiso Lwazi Msimanga

Nondumiso Lwazi Msimanga is a performance artist and provocateur. Known for her public arts activism and provocative public speaking, she performs many different roles. Her performance work deals with umsebenzi of protest practices and asks questions about ritual and rape. Nondumiso is also an independent arts’ writer and academic.

Eli Maria Lundgaard

Eli Maria Lundgaard (b.1989 in Trondheim, Norway) finished a BFA at Bergen Academy of Art and Design in 2015. She will start on a MFA at Malmö Art Academy in 2016.

She works with video, drawing, collages and sculpture.

Her art is about comprehension. She explores different concepts of the psyche, for instance anxiety or hypochondria. She also questions the subject and its surroundings: how body and environment are shaped by influences, direct intervention, or evolution and natural changes.

The relationship between the natural and the artificial is interesting. Both science and art are curious and concerned the absence of information. We are looking for systems and definitions to put things in. Everything around us should be categorized and organized. These categories and systems come from what we are learned to look for. What cannot be described "physically", but only sensed, leads to speculation and fantasy. What do we do when explanations are missing?

What we cannot see or explain turn into myths, monsters and magic. Fiction and dreams blends with reality and makes a setting we can live within and think.

Natasha Marie Llorens

Natasha Marie Llorens is an independent curator and writer based in Marseille and New York. Recent curatorial projects include “We the Watchers are Also Bodies,” at Hercules Art Studio Program in Manhattan, "The Exposed Suture" in Marseille, and "Mine are True Love Stories...." at the Skowhegan offices in New York. Llorens has held curatorial residencies at Marra Tein in Beirut and at Triangle Arts Association in New York, and is currently the 2017 Entrée Principale curatorial resident at Rond Point Projects in Marseille, France.

Her writing has appeared in ArtReview, Modern Painters, BOMB Magazine, Pastelegram, WdW Review, Contemporary Art Stavanger, Ibraaz, and elsewhere. Institutions taught at include Columbia University and the Cooper Union in New York City, and the Curatorial Studies MA program at Parsons in Paris. She is currently developing a PhD at Columbia University, focused on the representation of war in Algerian national cinema between 1965 and 1979.  

Image 1: Kerry Downey at "In This Hello America" as part of Action Club's collaboration with Douglas Paulson, April 2011, Double Session, a thesis exhibition for the Center of Curatorial Studies at Bard College curated by N. M. Llorens. Photo: Douglas Paulson.

Image 2: Natasha Marie Llorens photographed by Natalie Hope O'Donnell.

Benjamin Lignel

Benjamin Lignel is an artist, writer and curator. He was the editor of Art Jewelry Forum between January 2013 and December 2016, and edited three books under AJF’s imprint, including the first book-length study of jewelry exhibition-making.

His most recent curatorial project was Medusa, Jewellery and Taboos (2017) at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, in collaboration with Anne Dressen and Michèle Heuzé. Benjamin has lectured extensively on craft, and likes to organize (or co-organize) symposia on jewellery, of which The Public and Private Lives of Jewellery (Zimmerhof, 2011), Forgetting Jewellery (Paris, 2017) and The Fuzzy, the Fake and the Double - Trouble in Ornament (Paris, 2017).

He is a guest teacher at the Akademie der Bildende Künste (Nürnberg) and at Alchimia (Florence), and a mentor in the Handshake 4 pedagogical program (New Zealand). Ben regularly contributes essays to magazines, monographs and museum publications, and is currently working with co-editor Namita Wiggers towards a series of publications on jewelry and gender. He lives in Montreuil (France).

Gender and adornment research, documentation archive from San Francisco field trip, November 2016, photo: Lignel / Wiggers.

This research was supported by a Craft Research Fund grant from The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design, Inc., which was administered by Art Jewelry Forum.

matt lambert

matt lambert's work pushes the preconceptions and possibilities of jewelry and adornment as traditionally understood. Adornment has the ability to blur the fields of design, craft, fashion, and art—and through inhabiting queer and/or liminal spaces adornment has great strength. lambert believes that this aspect has yet to be fully explored as a terroristic act towards Westernized institutions.

Based in Detroit, lambert holds an MFA in metalsmithing from Cranbrook Academy of Art with addition to specific university training in craft skills, such as metalsmithing, ceramic, and fiber. Through apprenticeships lambert has also studied semi-antique rug restoration and leather working. lambert holds academic training in art history, psychology/human sexuality, and cultural studies from Wayne State University in Detroit MI.

lambert's work has been collected internationally and shown at venues including: Swedish Center for Architecture and Design (Stockholm, Sweden); Kunstnerforbundet (Oslo, Norway); the Craft Council of British Columbia Gallery (Vancouver, Canada); Handwerkskammer für München und Oberbayern (Munich, Germany); the Walker Arts Center (Minneapolis, Minnesota) and the Queer Culture Center (San Francisco, California). In 2017-2018 lambert was the first international artist based in jewelry/metalsmithing to be invited as a resident at IASPIS the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s programme for visual artists and designers in Stockholm, Sweden.

Auli Laitinen

Auli Laitinen is a jewellery artist based in Stockholm, Sweden. She is interested in contexts involving collaborative thinking and ideas including maker, wearer and viewer. Laitinen uses text, textile, and ready-mades to explore contemporary adornment. She sees jewellery as an active art form, whereby willing exhibitors carry signs of the makers ideas. Ideally, the wearer is engaged with the concept and aesthetics, and encourages conversation around what they wear.

Laitinen's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally since her graduation in 2000. She has received numerous grants and is represented at the National Museum in Stockholm and the Röhss Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden. She occasionally. teaches.

You wear, you watch the wearer, and you watch the wearer being watched.

- Auli Laitinen               

Mathew Lacosse

Mathew Lacosse (b. 1990, CA) is an artist and organiser whose work reevaluates and embellishes both architectural and natural space—its components, histories, and potentials. He holds a BFA (Hons) from the University of Manitoba (2018) and is currently living in Oslo.

Lacosse has exhibited at Gallery 623 (Solo, Winnipeg), Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts (Winnipeg), and curated exhibitions at the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation, GoSA, Nuit Blanche Winnipeg, and others. His writing has appeared in SCAN Journal and rip/torn magazine.

Image 1: Between Two Bridges, Wild Grass, 2016

Image 2: Separation, Reclaimed Spruce and Fir, 2017

Image 3: SOFA Students Association, Spectator / Boundary Net, Exhibition for Nuit Blanche in Winnipeg, Canada. 2017

Syowia Kyambi

Kyambi’s practice probes issues of race, perception, gender and memory. Her work examines how contemporary human experience is influenced by constructed histories, creating installations that include a performative practice to narrate stories and activate objects, exploring cultural identities, linking them to issues of loss, memory, race, and gender.

Based in Nairobi and of Kenyan and German origin, Syowia Kyambi has received commissions by the Kenya Institute of Administration, the National Museum of Kenya and the Art 4 Action Foundation in Kenya. She is an alumnus of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has been the recipient of several awards and grants, including most recently the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, being shortlisted for the Financial Times Emerging Artist Award and recipient of the Art in Global Health Grant from the Wellcome Trust Fund in the United Kingdom.

Her work has been exhibited in museums in Belgium, Finland, Kenya, Mali, Sweden, Germany, Zimbabwe, France, United Kingdom, Mexico, South Africa North America and Ireland

Gunnlaug Kuløy

Gunnlaug Bina Kuløy uses visual media, audio and sculptural installations to explore the intricate weave of circumstance, coincidence, emotion and decision that define a present situation or a state of mind. In turn this opens up a space to reflect upon interconnectedness in its many forms, and possible future trajectories. Her work evolves around themes as diverse as nostalgia and the immaterial connotations of objects, as well as biodiversity and the extinction of species. It often intersects with the realm of science; negotiating the ground between personal experience, observation and scientific research. Her intense focus on detail often results in the creation of spaces that demand full attentiveness in exchange for a sense of intimacy.

Gunnlaug holds a masters degree in Visual anthropology and has worked in various fields including cinematic production in Cuba, research on visual literacy in developing countries, media in exile and theatre production. The past few years she has divided her time between Oslo and Burma/Myanmar, working on projects related to wild endemic orchid conservation and mangrove forest restoration, resulting in the exhibitions Black Orchid Red Line, Goethe institute, Yangon (2016) and Macro Mangrove, Gallery 65 (2016). Her most recent exhibition Fate Undecided (2017) examined nostalgia in a socio-political context and was held at a site-specific location in Yangon.

Tina Kryhlmann

Tina Kryhlmann (b 1986, Oslo) completed her MFA in Fine Arts at Malmö Art Academy 2017. Working in an extended field of practises, varying from text, scuplture, installation, video and artist books, she uses painting as a pivot point and vantage point, to question the role of the self.

Kirsty Kross

Kirsty Kross holds a Bachelors Degree in Art History from the University of Queensland and a Masters of Art in Context from the Berlin University of the Arts.

Her work has been featured in Bedfellows at Tate Modern London, The Partisan Cafe at The Bergen Assembly, Østlandsutstillingen, ONO and PINK CUBE in Oslo as well as in Berlin at Parkhaus Projekts, Galerie Crystal Ball and Galerie Walden.  From 2000-2010 Kirsty Kross was a co-creator and performer in the music/performance group, Team Plastique and performed extensively across Europe and Australia at clubs and events such as Glastonbury, Kunstsalon Berlin and the closing party of the 2006 Berlin Biennale.

Kirsty Kross’ work combines performance, drawing, music and installation and deals with thehuman condition questioning appropriate adult behaviour and the relationship between the artist, artwork and audience. Her recent work deals with the attention economy, global economic and social changes as well as impending ecological doom. Kirsty Kross moved to Oslo in 2015 and is a board member of Performance Art Oslo.

Photographs by (from top to bottom) Miguel Lope, Thor Brødreskift, Zane Cerpina

Kjetil Detroit Kristensen

Kjetil Detroit Kristensen (b.1981) is an artist based in Oslo, Norway. He is currently occupied with his ongoing contemporary post-studio practice, interest for self-initiated venues, performative strategies, site (and situation) specific projects, pseudonyms, monochromes and polar bears. And also a belief that public art and democracy somewhat are the same, since the one thing cannot function without the other.

Kristensen is founder of the artist-run laboratory for art & public space Detroit Kunsthalle and co-founder of the organisation and collective September Split. He co-founded the collaborative curatorial platform and professional skateboard-art-team Contemporary Cruise Crew as well as the artist-run studio space VORTA at Lokomotivverkstedet in Middelalderparken, Oslo.

Kristensen holds a BA from the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art (2011) and a MFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2018). He has exhibited at Nebbelux, Fredrikstad; Gallery SØ, Copenhagen; Trinosophes, Detroit; Studio17, Stavanger; space 4235, Genova; The NY Art Book Fair, New York; MOCA - Museum of Contemporary Art, Haikou; Rogaland Kunstsenter, Stavanger; Tromsø Kunstforening, Tromsø; Akademirommet - Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; Kurant Visningsrom, Tromsø; Occupy Landscape, Stavanger; Dronning Sonja KunstStall at The Royal Palace, Oslo and Festspillene i Nord-Norge, Harstad among others.

Gereon Krebber

Sculptor Gereon Krebber studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and the Royal College of Art, London, and has exhibited extensively since the early 2000s. His work has featured in solo and group shows in Los Angeles, New York, Berlin, Cologne, Dusseldorf, London and elsewhere, and he has received commissions to develop public work in Bonn, Bochum and Viersen (DE). Awards received include the UK’s Jerwood Sculpture Prize (2003) and the Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Stipendium (Duisburg, 2009).

His working processes probe questions about sculpture as a discipline in relation to site, time, language, communication and the body, and extend across a highly experimental range of media, including writing and speech: for example, via the Laberflash, a new form of performance that he has developed, in which participants’ bodies, voices and thinking processes become unexpected new media for sculptural experimentation.