Past Residents
Past Resident2011: Foundation for a Civil Society
Alban Muja
Alban Muja was born in Mitrovica, Kosovo, in 1980. He currently lives in Prishtina, Kosovo, where he graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts. Muja’s artistic practice is mostly influenced by the social and political transformation processes in his home country of Kosovo, but also of the region and beyond. Muja investigates history as well as the socio-political themes and links them to his condition and social position. His work covers a wide range of media including video installation, short films, documentary films, drawings, paintings and performances, and has been extensively exhibited internationally.
Alban Muja, Blue Wall Red Door, 2009, Film, 33 min. Courtesy of the artist
Alban Muja, Museum Of Contemporary History, 2004, C-print. Courtesy of the artist
Alban Muja, Palestina, 2005, Video. Courtesy of the artist
Alban Muja, Windows Seat Drawing Project, 2006, Drawing. Courtesy of the artist
Alban Muja, Tibet, 2009, Video, 5.52 min. Courtesy of the artist
Past Resident2010: North Rhine-Westphalian State Chancellery
Nadja Verena Marcin
Nadja Verena Marcin (Germany) is a performance artist who lives and works in New York City and NRW, North Rhine-Westphalia. Internationally recognized as an emerging New Genre artist, her work focuses on human behavior, elemental emotions, and psychological responses linked to role-playing through video, performance and photography. Sourcing autobiographical experience, Marcin drives situations from ordinary to absurd while probing beneath the surface of human interaction. Inflated by playful, vigorous images, poetical texts, and handmade props, she exposes ambiguities depicting the constructive/deconstructive potential of man’s characteristic, often dialectic moods. Marcin confronts elemental emotions and unleashes psychological mechanism, exposing truths about morals, history, gender and politics inherent to Western culture. Her practice reveals a sharp analytical distance, correlating with high subjective empathy, condensed in a rigorously conceptual form.
Born in Germany, Marcin holds a MFA from Columbia University, New York, and graduated with honors from the Academy of Fine Arts,
Münster, Germany. Her work is widely exhibited in museums, art spaces/galleries and distinguished collections worldwide, including: Qui Vive? Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow MOMA, Russia; Salon/Screening, ICA Philadelphia, PA; Uncontrollable Flesh, Berkeley Art Museum, CA; Short-Term Deviation, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York; Kaunas Biennale, National Museum, Lithuania; Videonale 11 & 10, Kunstmuseum, Germany; Mediations Biennale, Poland; Models of Self-Reflection, AZKM, Germany; European Attitude, Zendai MOMA, China; FIFA-Festival pour Film sur L’Art, Quebec; EJECT-Ex teresa arte actual, Mexico; and Jumpnights, Ludwig Museum, Germany.
Nadja Verena Marcin, Everything Is Nothing, 2008, HDV video/film, 12:24 min. Courtesy of the artist
Nadja Verena Marcin, Elephant, 2009, HDV video installation, 1:97 min. Courtesy of the artist
Nadja Verena Marcin, Hotel, 2010, HD video/film, 12 min. Courtesy of the artist
Nadja Verena Marcin, Nadja By Breton, 2010, Performance, 23:48 min. Courtesy of the artist
Nadja Verena Marcin, Street, 2007, HDV video and performance, 6:02 min. Courtesy of the artist
Residents from Germany
Past Resident2010: Danish Arts Foundation
Christian Schmidt Rasmussen
Christian Schmidt-Rasmussen (b. 1963 in Copenhagen, Denmark) lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. He graduated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art in 1992.
In his most recent exhibition, Christian Schmidt-Rasmussen presents a series of new paintings installed upon black walls, upon which small texts are written. A diary written by a vampire, who is the artist himself, is also a part of the exhibition. Schmidt-Rasmussen presents us with stories from his own neighbourhood in Copenhagen, which represents a classic terrain vague, as well as the rest of Copenhagen and Denmark. The paintings communicate atmospheres in which the everyday and the trivial is illuminated by the poetic presence of color and glitter, but also by a melancholic darkness. In his work he addresses the relationship between the immediate and the distant world.
Christian Schmidt Rasmussen, Le Sacre du Printemps, 2010, Installation view. Courtesy of the artist. Photo courtesy of Anders Sune Berg
Christian Schmidt Rasmussen, Le Sacre du Printemps, 2010, Installation view. Courtesy of the artist. Photo courtesy of Anders Sune Berg
Christian Schmidt Rasmussen, Bubbles, 2009, Oil on canvas, 781/2 × 67 in. (199.39 × 170.18 cm). Courtesy of the artist
Christian Schmidt Rasmussen, Teat Tree, 2009, Oil on canvas, 781/2 × 67 in. (199.39 × 170.18 cm). Courtesy of the artist
Christian Schmidt Rasmussen, Migrant labor, 2009, Oil on canvas, 781/2 × 67 in. (199.39 × 170.18 cm). Courtesy of the artist
