Past Residents
Past Resident2016: 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.
Events & Exhibitions
Panel discussion: Raja’a Khalid with Giuseppe Moscatello
January 26, 2016
Raja'a Khalid, Oud Aura, 2015, Industrial scent diffuser and synthetic oud essential oil, 12 × 12 × 5 in. (30.48 × 30.48 × 12.7 cm). Courtesy of the artist
Residents from United Arab Emirates
Past Resident2015: Edward Steichen Award Luxembourg
Sophie Jung
Sophie Jung’s practice addresses representation and its pitfalls, both culturally as a system of disguised and shifting signs and personally as a way to track and record life. She regularly negotiates between form and affect, pragmatism and romance, between scrutinizing accuracy and magical awe. She has a deep trust in temporary definition, plays with concepts and notions packed into words, objects or facial expressions, shifting their assumed meaning from work to work or sentence to song. Her position is on the apronproscenium, the pre-stage, as a fluid messenger between reception and production of timelined Purport. . Her work is strict, slick and abstract as well as emotionally involved, performative and overly literal, be it video, performance, sculpture, text or photography.
Sophie Jung (born in 1982, Luxembourg, lives and works in Basel and London) received her BFA from the Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam and her MFA from Goldsmiths, London. Recent projects include her solo exhibition Learning about Heraldry, Ceri Hand Gallery, United Kingdom; Pick Me Ups & Pick Ups, ICA, United Kingdom; NY–LUX, MUDAM, Luxembourg; Throw Up / On Line, House for Electronic Arts Switzerland; read the room/you’ve got to, S.A.L.T.S., Switzerland; Inflected Objects, Instituto Svizzero, Milan, Italy; Panda Sex, State of Concept, Greece; X&X at Oslo10, Switzerland; and New Waiting at Temnikova & Kasela, Tallinn, Estonia. Future exhibitions include Uncanny Valley at Wysing Art Center, Äppärät at Ballroom Marfa.
Events & Exhibitions
Salon: Sophie Jung, Lilian Kreutzberger, and Maruša Sagadin
December 8, 2015
Sophie Jung, Tuned to the A* *440HZ, 2015, Photography, Size varies. Courtesy of the artist
Past Resident2015: 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.
Astrid Myntekær, MANA, 2015, Algae spirulina powder, mac computer and algae sex. Courtesy of the artist
