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
Residents from United Arab Emirates
Past Resident2015: Mondriaan Fund
Saskia Janssen
Saskia Janssen mixes a variety of media with an anthropological approach in her socially engaged site-specific works. She has collaborated with sailors, nightclub singers, hard drug users, Buddhists, and psychiatric hospital patients and inmates. The outcomes of these collaborations have taken the form of installations, recorded albums, drawings, performances and printed publications. Together with George Korsmit, in 2005 she established The Rainbow Soulclub, an art studio in an Amsterdam shelter for long-term drug users. Since then, they have run a weekly program in the studio, often together with their art students.
Saskia Janssen (born 1968 Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands) lives and works in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Art in The Hague and was a resident at the Rijksakademie in 1996 and 1997. Exhibitions include Diamonds in the Sky, Museum Het Dolhuys, Haarlem; A Glass of Water (Some Objects on the Path to Enlightenment), Ellen de Bruijne PROJECTS, Amsterdam; The Dutch Identity?, Museum De Paviljoens, Almere; and Monument for Invisible Particles, commission for the Bonairian tax building for the Central Government Real Estate Agency. Janssen is represented by Ellen de Bruijne PROJECTS and currently teaches at de Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.
Residents from The Netherlands
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.