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: Alfred Kordelin Foundation

Henni Alftan

Henni Alftan is interested in the mimetic relation of paint as material and the image. She aims to discover the moment when the mere paint on canvas transforms into a resemblance of an object – when our gaze interprets and forms the mix of materials into an idea. Thus, her paintings are as much about the painting itself as an object, cherishing the physical qualities of the painting, its history and objecthood. Alftan’s brushstrokes are never improvised, but always made according to a thorough plan. She likes to think of this method of predetermined strokes as manneristic, in the sense of seeking to represent art itself and the artifice of the actual mark-making.

Henni Alftan (born 1979, in Helsinki, Finland) moved to France in 1998 where she graduated from Ecole Nationale d’Art de la Villa Arson and Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. Her work has been exhibited in both Finland and France in venues such as Galerie Anhava, Forum Box, Galleria Huuto, Amos Anderson Art Museum, and Galerie Claire Gastaud. Her works are present in public collections such as at the Helsinki Art Museum, Amos Anderson Art Museum, and the Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art. She has received the support of institutions such as Arts Promotion Centre of Finland, Swedish Cultural Foudation in Finland, Finnish Fund for Culture, and Centre Nationale des Arts Plastiques etc.

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.