JULY 2024
Agnieszka Gotowała (Poland) https://www.agnieszkagotowala.com/
Agnieszka is a multidisciplinary artist from Poland, who works within the visual and performance arts. Focuses on the processes of the research, exploration and transformation in the fields of states of human and nature, and the memory and identity they contain.
Judith Baumel /USA / Writer
https://www.judithbaumel.com
Judith Baumel is Professor Emerita of English and Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at Adelphi University. She has served as President of The Association of Writers and Writing Programs, director of The Poetry Society of America and a Fulbright Scholar in Italy. Her poetry, translations and essays have been published in Poetry, The Yale Review, AGNI, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, The Common, The New Republic, The Paris Review, among others.
Baumel’s work is represented in a number of anthologies including Telling and Remembering: A Century of Jewish American Poetry; Gondola Signore Gondola: Poems on Venice; Poems of New York (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets) and The Eloquent Poem: 128 Contemporary Poems and Their Making. She has received awards from The New York Foundation for the Arts, Bronx Recognizes Its Own, Laurence Goldstein Award in Poetry from MQR, and fellowships Hadassah Brandeis Institute, Yaddo, Saltonstall, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Millay, among others.
Judith Baumel stays at KHMessen together with her partner Philip Alcabes.
Philip Alcabes /USA / Writer
https://www.philipalcabes.com/
Philip Alcabes is the author of Dread: How Fear and Fantasy Have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to Avian Flu, published by PublicAffairs Books. He is a skeptical scientist whose work challenges the conventional wisdom about health, disease, and risk.
Alcabes was trained as an infectious-disease epidemiologist and studied epidemic contagion, especially AIDS and tuberculosis, for two decades. Drawing on his experience as an epidemiologist, he examines the history of disease control and the ethics of public-health policy making from a scientist’s persepctive. Among his essays on epidemic history and society’s responses to contagion are “The Bioterrorism Scare“, “The Ordinariness of AIDS“, “What Ails Public Health?“, and “Heart of Darkness: AIDS, Africa, and Race“.
His writing exposes the myths of unprecedented danger and “risk,” and looks into the many ways that we express anxieties about modernity as misgivings about healthfulness. And he sheds light on the routes by which the consensus of the “scientific community” disguises the unwillingness of the powerful to wrestle with the real problems of modernity: too little relief for those who suffer and too much injustice.
Philip Alcabes stays at KHMessen together with his partner Judith Baumel.
Karine Portal /France / Photography, Drawing, video
https://www.karineportal.com/
Working photography, drawing, video, my works are developed around the notions of temporality, alteration and identity. They focus on interstitial moments, where flow and vacuity reveal alternately. The idea of layers, what takes place “”between”” – between-time or between-forms, are essential elements in the forms that I develop.
The idea of cycle, process of construction, re-construction, re-writing of time and living, are for me important data, which allow me to produce forms and to invent correspondences between different mediums which occupy me. Graduate of the National Fine Arts Academy of Paris, I pursue my researches, regularly participating in exhibitions in France and Europe.
Michal Gavish /USA /Visual art
https://www.michalgavish.com/
Michal Gavish — an artist and physical chemist — began her neurological portraits by collaborating with Prof. Ronen at the University of California in San Francisco and other scientists around the world. She distills their findings into art, following personal family connections to the layered effects of our free will and neurodiversity.
Are our thoughts and movements are ours, or are they controlled by our brains? Nobody is really neurotypical: we are infinitely complicated and each is unique. This was always known intuitively, but new methods in neurology, such as brainbow analysis and AI mapping, make this diversity undeniable.
(2022 Changwon Sculpture Biennale S. Korea)
Adam Sébire /Australia /Artist, filmmaker, photographer
https://www.adamsebire.info/
Adam Sébire is an artist-filmmaker whose artworks explore climate change and the Anthropocene.
His artistic practise approaches its vast spatiotemporal dimensions through lens-based art, especially multi-screen video.
He’s also one of the Arctic Circle’s 4 million human inhabitants.
Having just opened his solo exhibition at Svalbard’s art gallery in March 2020, Australia’s borders closed against the pandemic for 18 months, marooning him first in a lighthouse for 3 months; then above Norway’s Arctic Circle, where he now lives and works. Adam studied documentary filmmaking at the national film schools of Australia & Cuba, going on to direct documentaries for Australian public broadcasters ABC & SBS.
His experiences filming on Tuvalu in 2003, only 2m above the rising waters of the Pacific, turned his work towards climate change. He completed a MFA and began a PhD to explore how the imperceptible elements of the climate emergency present particular representational challenges in lens-based art.
Christopher Linforth /UK /Writer
https://christopherlinforth.com/
Christopher Linforth is the author of three story collections, The Distortions (Orison Books, 2022), winner of the 2020 Orison Books Fiction Prize, Directory (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2020), and When You Find Us We Will Be Gone (Lamar University Press, 2014). Christopher’s stories have been published in around one hundred literary magazines. Recent fiction appears in the Barcelona Review, Oxford Review of Books, Notre Dame Review, Banshee, Books Ireland, Witness, The Arkansas International, Fiction International, Southern Humanities Review, Monkeybicycle, Hobart, Hotel Amerika, BULL, New World Writing, Popshot, Prism International, Consequence, Epiphany, and Best Microfiction.
In the last few years, he has been awarded fellowships and scholarships to the BAU Institute at the Camargo Foundation, Kone Foundation, Fondation Heinrich Maria & Jane Ledig-Rowohlt (Château de Lavigny), Vermont Studio Center, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Ragdale Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Hambidge Center, International Writers’ and Translators’ House in Ventspils, and the Irish Writers Centre.
Cristina Mariani /Italy /textile art and weaving
http://www.cristinamariani-art.com
Cristina is a textile artist specialised in contemporary tapestry. She has experience in hand-and jacquard weaving, embroidery, natural dyeing and shibori.
Cristina collaborates with museums and galleries and exhibits her works in Italy and abroad. She also gives tapestry-and weaving courses.
She continuously deepens the textile culture in every aspect, from the artisan and technical-design to the artistic and anthropological one.
JUNE 2024
Cristina Mariani /Italy /textile art and weaving
http://www.cristinamariani-art.com
Cristina is a textile artist specialised in contemporary tapestry. She has experience in hand-and jacquard weaving, embroidery, natural dyeing and shibori.
Cristina collaborates with museums and galleries and exhibits her works in Italy and abroad. She also gives tapestry-and weaving courses.
She continuously deepens the textile culture in every aspect, from the artisan and technical-design to the artistic and anthropological one.
Elleke van Gorsel /the Netherlands /visual art
https://www.ellekevangorsel.nl/
Elleke van Gorsel creates images, installations, drawings, paintings and graphics.
Her recent work mainly consists of location-based installations and thematic projects.
Elleke is inspired by (autobiographical) history, family connections, literary and philosophical texts, socially committed themes and religion.
Beth Grossman/ USA / visual art
http://www.bethgrossman.com
Beth Grossman is a socio-political artist, who sees the visual as a way to create community dialog. Her art is a comfortable point of entry into the ongoing dialog about ‘correct’ history, the life-shaping force of religion and the power of social beliefs. The artist takes creative liberty with these charged topics and makes them accessible with beauty and humor. By shifting the context of familiar objects, words and images, she opens them up for fresh examinations that are by turn playful, stimulating and thought provoking.
Evy Horpestad Tjåland/ Norway / visual art
https://www.etjaaland.no/
Evy Horpestad Tjåland (b.1963) lives and works in Stavanger. Evy has a Bachelor in Fine Art from Wimbledon College of Art, UK and has exhibited both nationally and internationally.
Her work contains painting, drawing, textiles and installations and moves in both the figurative and the abstract landscape. Time, materiality and perception are themes she works with in a repetitive and simplified idiom. How people organize their existence and everyday life interests her.
In her projects, she goes in depth and into details. Repetition, routines and simplified idioms are the starting point, multitudes of small circles flow smoothly into each other. The works take on a meditative feel, which she seeks within the techniques she uses.
Mayumi Okabayashi/ Germany/Japan / Drawings
https://www.mayumi-o.com/
“When you look at my pictures, you might imagine cells or plants, light or shadow or some other element of nature. This fluid form allows them to be anything, or something in between. I try to capture this movement in nature, for example from the cell to the plant and back, without holding on to it. I try to depict the state and the movement at the same time, the drifting apart and the coming back together and the form in between.
For me, this instability and movement are two sides of the same coin and the coin itself.”
MAY 2024
Sölvi Steinn Þórhallsson /Island /visual art
Sölvi Steinn Þórhallsson graduated with a BA in Fine Arts from Iceland University of the Arts in 2020. He has been a member of Kling & Bang since late 2020 and co-founded the artist run space King og Bong the same year. Sölvi Steinn has participated in solo and group exhibitions both in Iceland and abroad. In his works he deals with personal narratives and ponders the purpose, meaninglessness and cause of events and objects around him and works variously in video, sculpture and installations.
Silfrún Una Guðlaugsdóttir /Island /performance art and sound art
https://taraogsilla.cargo.site/
Silfrún Una Guðlaugsdóttir (b.1996) is a visual artist working with sound poetry, performance and installations.
Through the years her artistic exploration has centered around the interplay between sound,objects and a place, and a fascination for sincerity within oral sounds. In her work she speculates the correlation between a sound and a place and how you can tell a story by combining visual elements and melodies, be it by mimicking instruments, foley sounds, whispering a poem or humming your favorite tune.
Alongside with her solo practice she has a collaborative practice with Tara Njála Ingvarsdóttir as the duo Tara and Silla. They have been working together since they first met in the BA Visual Arts department of the Iceland University of the Arts which they graduated from in the spring of 2020. Central themes in their works are friendship, social situations and celebration.
Beth Grossman/ USA / visual art
http://www.bethgrossman.com
Beth Grossman is a socio-political artist, who sees the visual as a way to create community dialog. Her art is a comfortable point of entry into the ongoing dialog about ‘correct’ history, the life-shaping force of religion and the power of social beliefs. The artist takes creative liberty with these charged topics and makes them accessible with beauty and humor. By shifting the context of familiar objects, words and images, she opens them up for fresh examinations that are by turn playful, stimulating and thought provoking.
Evy Horpestad Tjåland/ Norway / visual art
https://www.etjaaland.no/
Evy Horpestad Tjåland (b.1963) lives and works in Stavanger. Evy has a Bachelor in Fine Art from Wimbledon College of Art, UK and has exhibited both nationally and internationally.
Her work contains painting, drawing, textiles and installations and moves in both the figurative and the abstract landscape. Time, materiality and perception are themes she works with in a repetitive and simplified idiom. How people organize their existence and everyday life interests her.
In her projects, she goes in depth and into details. Repetition, routines and simplified idioms are the starting point, multitudes of small circles flow smoothly into each other. The works take on a meditative feel, which she seeks within the techniques she uses.
Mayumi Okabayashi/ Germany/Japan / Drawings
https://www.mayumi-o.com/
“When you look at my pictures, you might imagine cells or plants, light or shadow or some other element of nature. This fluid form allows them to be anything, or something in between. I try to capture this movement in nature, for example from the cell to the plant and back, without holding on to it. I try to depict the state and the movement at the same time, the drifting apart and the coming back together and the form in between.
For me, this instability and movement are two sides of the same coin and the coin itself.”
Iris Lam / the Netherlands / Illustrator, writer, animations
https://www.irislam.nl/
APRIL 2024
Arne Ingvaldsen/ Norway / Sculpture
https://arneingvaldsen.no/
He has participated in many individual and group exhibitions at home and abroad, such as Kunsthuset Kabuso, gallery USF, Bergen, Trøndelag center for contemporary art, and LIAlab, Bogota, Columbia.
Ingvaldsen’s work has been purchased for a number of public spaces such as the Working Arbeidsmiljøinstituttet, Oslo, Børstad idrettspark / Sport Arena, Hamar municipality, and Idda Arena, Kristiansand.
Mayumi Okabayashi/ Japan-Berlin / Drawings
https://www.mayumi-o.com/
“When you look at my pictures, you might imagine cells or plants, light or shadow or some other element of nature. This fluid form allows them to be anything, or something in between. I try to capture this movement in nature, for example from the cell to the plant and back, without holding on to it. I try to depict the state and the movement at the same time, the drifting apart and the coming back together and the form in between.
For me, this instability and movement are two sides of the same coin and the coin itself.”
Juna Wesley / USA / Printmaking
https://www.junawesley.com
Iris Lam / the Netherlands / Illustrator, writer, animations
https://www.irislam.nl/
MARCH 2024
Iris Lam / the Netherlands / Illustrator, writer, animations
https://www.irislam.nl/
Kristina Kapeljuh / Austria / printmaker
https://www.kkapeljuh.com/
Jamie Ashforth / Canada / Visual artist
https://www.jamieashforth.com/
Jamie Ashforth is a Canadian visual artist exploring new forms of connection through socially and environmentally engaged art making. Her experimental approaches to drawing, print, photography, and installation explore embodied experiences of transition.
Participatory, event-based practice is an emergent part of how she unpacks the relationship between what is temporal and tactile, and ways of generating kinship across distance.
Marianna Bruno / Italy / Painter and illustrator
https://www.marianna-bruno.com/
Marianna studied painting and illustration at the Libera Accademia d’Arte Novalia in Alba and specialized in engraving and art printing techniques at the Il Bisonte International School of Art Graphics in Florence.
She works strictly by hand with traditional techniques, in particular tempera, and the links and relationships between man, nature and culture find ample space in her works.
Marianna is an illustrator and author, collaborating with theater companies, museums, cultural associations and artist residencies. She also organizes and leads workshops and laboratories for adults and children.
FEBRUARY 2024
Niall Dooley / Ireland / visual artist
https://nialldooley.com/
Katharina Hamann / Germany / filmmaker
https://katharinawaisburd.de/
Katharina works as a freelance director, camerawoman and editor.
After graduating from high school, I first studied art history and classical archeology, and in 2006 I began studying film at the Beuth University of Technology.
In 2016 I received my diploma in documentary film/directing from the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy.
Jamie Ashforth / Canada / Visual artist
https://www.jamieashforth.com/
Jamie Ashforth is a Canadian visual artist exploring new forms of connection through socially and environmentally engaged art making. Her experimental approaches to drawing, print, photography, and installation explore embodied experiences of transition.
Participatory, event-based practice is an emergent part of how she unpacks the relationship between what is temporal and tactile, and ways of generating kinship across distance.
Marianna Bruno / Italy / Painter and illustrator
https://www.marianna-bruno.com/
Marianna studied painting and illustration at the Libera Accademia d’Arte Novalia in Alba and specialized in engraving and art printing techniques at the Il Bisonte International School of Art Graphics in Florence.
She works strictly by hand with traditional techniques, in particular tempera, and the links and relationships between man, nature and culture find ample space in her works.
Marianna is an illustrator and author, collaborating with theater companies, museums, cultural associations and artist residencies. She also organizes and leads workshops and laboratories for adults and children.
JANUARY 2024
Marion Tränkle / Germany / Performance
http://mariontraenkle.eu/
Marion Tränkle works in the field of performance art and design and is based in Amsterdam. Her work engages systems thinking, cross-disciplinary perspectives, and experimentation, integrating electronics and systems thinking into scenographies for stages.
Her visual scenarios deliberately negotiate the constructive tension between the carefully constructed and generative processes, between risk and responsibility, and between autonomous performance and human intervention.
Marcia Walker / Canada / Writer
http://www.marciawalker.ca/
Marcia Walker’s writing has appeared in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reads, The Chicago Review, The New Quarterly, Fiddlehead, The New York Times, PRISM international, Room, EVENT, The Globe and Mail, CBC radio, and elsewhere. Her work has been shortlisted for The Commonwealth Short Story Prize, PRISM’s fiction and non-fiction prize, and the Writers’ Union of Canada short prose competition.
A graduate of the University of Guelph’s MFA program in creative writing, she has been awarded fellowships and residencies from Saari, Yaddo, The Vermont Centre, and The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She has received grants from the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canadian Council for the Arts.
Born in Shakespeare, Ontario, she has worked as a professional actor, a junior ranger, a bookseller, an intervenor, a yoga instructor, and a lawyer. Currently, she lives in Montreal and teaches creative writing online through the University of Toronto’s Continuing Education.
Marianna Bruno / Italy / Painter and illustrator
https://www.marianna-bruno.com/
Marianna studied painting and illustration at the Libera Accademia d’Arte Novalia in Alba and specialized in engraving and art printing techniques at the Il Bisonte International School of Art Graphics in Florence.
She works strictly by hand with traditional techniques, in particular tempera, and the links and relationships between man, nature and culture find ample space in her works.
Marianna is an illustrator and author, collaborating with theater companies, museums, cultural associations and artist residencies. She also organizes and leads workshops and laboratories for adults and children.
Tia Taylor Berry / Great Britain / Visual artist
tiamariataylorberry.com
Tia Taylor Berry is an esoteric arts practitioner living and working in Newcastle Upon Tyne, born 1999 in Northumberland. Tia’s work exists as part of her spiritual practices, exploring her presented notion of spiritual space, dealing with notions of magic and the other. Though specialising in geometric abstraction and large scale installation Tia works across media to join material in the creation of one ‘entity’, an artwork which transcends the limitations of knowingness and conventional understanding into a space otherworldly wonder.
Exploring mediumistic techniques the work is created through an experienced shift in state of being, it exists as a recording of Tias connection to and encounters with her presented notion of spiritual space. Within these liminal spaces of the works creation Tia connects with that beyond the tangible, bridging the chasm between the material and the ethereal.
Tzu-Ning Chiang (Viola Chiang) / Taiwan/ photography and graphic printmaking
https://violatipia.wordpress.com/
Viola was born in Taipei, Taiwan, lives and works between Venice and Dublin. She works with various printmaking and handmade paper techniques made with natural materials. She is interested in ecosystems and researches how thinking like a geologist can help save the world.
