Past Residents

Residents Map

Past Resident
2016: Maraya Art Centre

Raja’a Khalid

Raja’a Khalid’s practice is concerned with contemporary narratives of class, luxury, and consumer and material cultures, especially those that connect her native Arabian Gulf region with the world at large. She is interested in how current day capitalist economies articulate ‘culture’ and seek out motifs of soft power that reflect on the Gulf’s streaming constructions of heritage, authenticity, wealth, masculinity, sport, game, athleticism, adornment, wellness and wilderness. Outcomes are often sculptural abstractions based on these investigations and mediums employed include industrial processes, systems or rhetoric e.g. patents, wholesale supplies or B2B goods, etc.

Raja’a Khalid (born 1984, Saudi Arabia) is a Dubai-based artist and writer. She received her MFA in Fine Art from Cornell University, where she was also the recipient of the Cornell Council for the Arts Grant in 2013. Recent awards and residencies include the NYU Abu Dhabi FIND Research Fellowship, 2014; the Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen International Fellowship for Art and Theory, 2015, and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten Guest Residency, 2015. Her work has been shown in New York, Dubai and Vienna.

Residents from United Arab Emirates

Past Resident
2015: National Endowment for the Arts

Aviva Rahmani

Ecological artist Aviva Rahmani’s projects range from site-specific installations and complete landscape restorations, to museum venues that reference paint, sound and photography. Considered a seminal figure in ecological art, Rahmani’s work in Maine restored coastal wetlands systems and led to the development of her original theory about bio-regional sustainability, “Trigger Point Theory as Aesthetic Activism.” Rahmani creates trans-disciplinary artifacts from collaborative research to address environmental degradation.

Aviva Rahmani practice continues to return to and be influence by some of her earlier collaborative works including a ten-year performance that effected ecological restoration as art, Ghost Nets, 1990-2015. Blue Rocks, 2002, which resulted in the restoration of 26 wetlands acres and an investment of $500,000.00 from the USDA. New scientific knowledge was produced alongside Fish Story Project, 2013, which led to the realization that re-greening the earth by 36% by 2030 could mitigate climate change. Her current project, Blued Trees, which spans intercontinental space, is conceived as a five-movement symphony as a sculptural installation in the path of fossil fuel infrastructure. Aviva Rahmani is an affiliate at the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research, the University of Colorado Boulder, and a PhD candidate at the University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom. Rahmani has published internationally and has been the recipient of numerous grants including a 2009 Arts and Healing Award for work on water.

Past Resident
2015: Danish Arts Foundation

Astrid Myntekær

Astrid Myntekær constantly tests, challenges and refines materials and technologies in new contexts and compositions. Light and sound merge and hit you in both body and head. Posh and high-tech materials establish sculptural and performative links to more low-key materials from the local DIY shop and low-key industrial producers. In a time when hackers are the new revolutionaries—and there are signs that we could perhaps move completely through the screen—Astrid Myntekær lets topics of biology, emotion and spirit resonate through her work.

Astrid Myntekær (1985, Denmark) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2012. Her recent solo shows include MANA, Black Sesame Space, Beijing and ORGONE at Overgaden – Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen. Astrid Myntekær’s work has been exhibited at Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde; Kunsthal Charlottenborg; Kunstforeningen Gl Strand; and Gallery Jacob Bjørn. Astrid Myntekær is representing Denmark at the Jeune Creation Europeenne Biennale, 2015–17.