Current Residents

List Grid

Current Resident: May 1, 2025–Jul 31, 2025

Studio #207

Lina Hashim

Lina Hashim’s artistic practice delves into themes of cultural identity, resistance, and spirituality, blending traditional Arab motifs with contemporary technology to create immersive, thought-provoking experiences. Through performance, installation, and visual art, Hashim explores the intersections of oppression and empowerment, often employing repetition and symbolism to reveal deeper truths. Her work invites audiences to engage both physically and emotionally, sparking dialogue around race, gender, and the body within personal and global contexts.

Lina Hashim has exhibited work at Norton Museum of Art, Florida; Nikolaj Art Gallery, Copenhagen; and East Wing, Dubai, among others.

I exhibit ritual objects, religious artifacts, personal correspondence, and psychiatric records to explore the curse I’ve been told I bear. In a lecture performance, I confront the audience with my research, asking: Am I cursed, or am I losing my mind? I guide the audience’s movement through the exhibition space.

Lina Hashim, The Touch, 2020, installation.

Who am I (2023) explores issues of colonialism, misrepresentation, and the Western portrayal of Muslim women as oppressed. In this solo exhibition at Nikolaj Kunsthal, I transform the space using mirror mosaics, calligraphy, and gold decoration, reflecting both my cultural heritage as a Muslim and my identity as a woman. The installation challenges stereotypes and invites a deeper reflection on personal and collective narratives.

Lina Hashim, Who am I, 2023, installation.

The work is based on the history of western art, where especially binarity was represented and depicted, which for this performance can create discomfort, as only binary division principles are used among the audience. In the work ODALISQUE the audience travels into the artist Lina Hashim’s work as a female artist with a Muslim cultural background. At the same time, the audience is also taken into the Western, white art history, where the portrayed brown woman is often portrayed as the odalisque; a mute, seductive, female slave in a harem. Through this work, Hashim wants to redefine the story that has been told through art history and create a space for retelling the cemented ideology of the erotic harem. Hashim is interested in the representation of the odalisque figure in Western painted art, particularly during the period of Orientalism, as a masculine colonial construct, and the contemporary ideas of liberation and rescue of the same woman.

Lina Hashim, odalisque, 2024, performance.

Unlawful Meetings (2014) captures the secret sexual encounters of young Muslims, photographed with a hidden camera in places like cars or bushes. Torn between their desires and strict sexual morality, these moments are shown without revealing faces, preserving anonymity. The grainy, cloudy images evoke voyeurism while maintaining a moral boundary, emphasizing the tension between curiosity and privacy. While the photos are not illegal, their ethical ambiguity stems from their deeply private nature, which is why identification was avoided.

Lina Hashim, Unlawful meetings, 2014, photography.

Residents from Iraq

Sukaina Kubba

Iraq, Canada

Canada Council for the Arts

2022

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Iceland

Current Resident: May 1, 2025–Jul 31, 2025

Icelandic Art Center

Studio #205

Artist

Melanie Ubaldo

Melanie Ubaldo creates monuments to unbelonging. Her artistic practice constitutes an examination of profound intersectionality through autobiography. Her works are characterized by vulnerable autobiographical narratives surrounding racism, prejudice, power, and discrimination. Using diverse media, her large-scale installations address themes of home, memory, poverty, displacement, immigration, and identity. Despite their scale, her works simultaneously convey a delicate quality, mirroring the fragility and precariousness of their subject matter.

Melanie Ubaldo has exhibited work at The National Gallery of Iceland; Akureyri Art Museum; and Reykjavík Art Museum, all in Iceland, among others.

melanieubaldo.com