ArtEx participants 2023 - 2024

Azar Ebrahimi

Documentary filmmaker

Azar Ebrahimi (b. 1989) is a Norwegian-Iranian documentary film maker. She grew up in Trondheim, studied film science in England and from 2010 - 2023 she worked at NRK (The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) in Oslo, as a director for both individual documentaries and series. Her projects have received great reviews and she has received nominations and awards for, among other projects, Helene sjekker inn, F-ordet, Innafor and Folkevalgt. The common thread of her projects is that they open closed spaces and break down prejudices. Azar is now developing her first documentaries as an independent filmmaker. When she's not doing that, she climbs mountains and rocks all over the world.

Photo: Agnete Brun

 

Ida Haugen

Dancer and choreographer

Ida Haugen (b. 1991) is a versatile dance artist from Skien, who lives and works in Oslo. She explores performing arts as a performer and choreographer in collaborative projectsand individual works. In addition to dance, she is interested in a wide range of vocabulary, including improvisation, acting, theatre, film, text and song. With a BA in contemporary dance from the Oslo Academy of Arts and studies at Studio Harmonic in Paris, she has been a member of the artist collective Oslo Koreografiske since 2018, and danced in works by Ellen Jerstad/Roza Moshtaghi, Nagelhus Schia Productions/Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Stian Danielsen, Jennie Bergsli and others. Haugen held an apprenticeshipposition at Carte Blanche, Norway's national company for contemporary dance, from 2014 to 2015. Internationally, she has collaborated with Kari Hoaas Productions, touredJordan, Georgia, Palestine and opened the LaMaMa Moves! festival in New York 2023. Haugen has also contributed to film festivals as a solo performer in "Shadowland" by Kari Hoaas. In 2020, she debuted as a choreographer with "Hot Moon", in collaborationwith Dansens Hus and NORA. As a choreographer, she has also created works for revues, choirs, fashion shows and young dancers. Haugen has received several grants and support for her work as a dance artist, including a 1-year work grant from the Cultural Council in 2022. She is currently working as a dancer and choreographer in a new project with Unge Viken Theater directed by Ellen Jerstad. Spring 2024 she will dance in De Syv Dødsynder at the Opera, directed by Hanne Tømta, and in the autumn of 2024 she will start the solo project Rose Water, where she explores her background and belonging to Vietnam through her mother's journey as a boat refugee.

Photo: Agnete Brun

 

Julian Juhlin

Scenographer and visual artist

Julian Juhlin (b. 1987) is a Danish artist and scenographer educated at Denmark's National School of Performing Arts. He has designed both scenography and costumes for a large number of stages, including the Royal Theater and the Danish contribution to the Prague Quadrennial, the world's largest exhibition of scenography. At the same time, he has worked as an artist by using the approaches to staging he learned from working with theater to create a theatrical visual art. His practice includes film, installation, performance and scenography and he has exhibited in places as diverse as Copenhagen Contemporary and Times Square in New York, has been awarded the Young Artistic Elite Program from the Statens Kunstfond in Denmark and ISCP residency in NYC. He is fascinated by the tension between the staged and the authentic and has staged his own reality and built up a personal iconography of images and figures based on his own life, where he blurs the boundaries between life, art and theatre. 

Photo: Agnete Brun

 

 

 

Louise Lyngh Bjerregaard

Fashion designer

Louise Lyngh Bjerregaard is a fashion designer based in Paris known for blurring the lines between couture and ready-to-wear. Based on craftsmanship, an obsession for textilesand a special attention to detail, she has developed a brand that has a strong focus on technical sensibility while uniting art, fashion and subversion. Bjerregaard studied tailoringat the Scandinavian Academy of Fashion Design in Copernhagen. She interned with the designers Dennis Lyngsø, Anne Sofie Madsen, Asger Juel Larsen and Mike Eckhaus at Eckhaus Latta in New York. Louise started her career working on a project with Lady Gaga, and in 2015 she studied knitwear at Central Saint Martins in London under Professor Sarah Gresty. Bjerregaard launched women's clothing under her own name in 2019 and moved to Paris in early 2021. Louise Lyngh Bjerregaard is best known for her textile expertise and artistic knitwear,  although in an interview with Dazed and Confused, Bjerregaard stated that she ”felt the need to break out of the knitwear label that’s been put on her name”, asserting that her brand was not a knitwear label and demonstrating this through her runway collections. Her brand is also known for its zero-waste policy and sustainability. Her work has been shown at a number of institutions, including the Maison du Danemark, the National Gallery of Denmark and the Moderna Museet in Malmö. Bjerregaard hadher runway debut in 2021 during Couture Week in Paris. A few months later, she made her digital debut at Copenhagen Fashion Week in August 2021. Earlier that year, she wasnominated as a finalist at the Zalando Sustainability Awards 2021 and the Magasin du Nord Fashion Prize 2021. In March 2022, Bjerregaard debuted her first ready-to-wearcollection. In the same year, she was nominated as "Name of the Year" at the ELLE Awards. In February 2023, she debuted her first artisanal ready-to-wear collection during Paris Fashion Week at 35/37.

Photo: Agnete Brun

Maria Ose

Flutist

Maria Ose (b. 1998) is currently working as a solo flutist in the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra whwrw she will be for the 2023/24 season. At the age of 15, Maria made her debut as a soloist, when she and her twin sister Ingrid played with the Norwegian Broadcasting Orchestra. Since then she has been a soloist with both the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra and the Arctic Philharmonic. She substitutes as solo flutist in the largest orchestras in Norway, such as the Opera Orchestra, theNorwegian Broadcasting Orchestra and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. Maria is a dedicated chamber musician, and in 2020 she founded her own chamber music festival,Ose Kammerspel, together with her sister Ingrid. She is currently to be seen at several of the country's festivals and concert series, and has played chamber music withinternationally highly sought-after musicians such as Elise Båtnes, Håvard Gimse, and Francoix Leleux. Maria has received the Dream Scholarship from Norsk Tipping, the Furore Scholarship from Sogn og Fjordane Sparebank and the TÆL Scholarship from Sparebanken Midt-Norge - where she and her sister Ingrid were named the cultural talents of the year.  Maria is currently  pursuing a master's degree at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München under one of Europe's most sought-after flute professors, Prof. Andrea Lieberknecht.

Photo: Agnete Brun

Mark Tholander

Visual artist

Mark Tholander is a Danish visual artist who lives and works in Copenhagen. The notion of what a community consists of is a pivot point in his practice. He has worked on themes such as the family as a normalizing community and society as a social hierarchy. His practice revolves around what happens when communities step out of normality, out of synchronicity - and whether we can create new connections in collective disorientation. His practice consists to a high degree of collaboration, and he has worked together with musicians and actors to create cinematic works. He has previously shown his works at Rencontres Internationales (FR), Seattle Transmedia & Independent Film Festival (US), Korea Foundation Gallery (KR), Kunsthal Aarhus (DK), FILE – Electronic Language International Festival (BR), New Media Artspace ( US) and the Beijing International Short Film Festival (CN). His latest project has been a multi-channel installation at VEGA, in collaboration with Art Hub (as part of VEGA's new strategy to work across the art forms in 2022), and a solo exhibition at This Is Not a Church in Seoul, South Korea, in 2023.

Photo: Agnete Brun

Marte Nødtvedt Skjæggestad

Architect

Marte is the one half of the Norwegian-Danish architect duo Jespersen Nødtvedt, who focus on craftsmanship and sustainability. Their office wants to look at our shared material bank with a new perspective, merging architectural artistry and sustainable materials into a unified entity. The aim is an architecture where construction and materials create the expression itself and transcend traditional ideas about form and style. In parallel with built projects, the office holds a more exploratory track where construction and material investigations are explored in models and 1:1. The two tracks inform each other in a unified and multifaceted artistic work. Part of their work is to be seen at the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen and at the Utzon Center in Aalborg. Their work has received several prizes, working grants and career programs, like DUKE by the Danish Arts Foundation.

Photo: Agnete Brun

 

Uno Vesje

Harpist and composer

Uno Alexander Vesje (1989) is an award-winning Norwegian harpist and composer. Uno made his international breakthrough in the harp world as winner of both the World Harp Competition in the Netherlands 2021 and the USA International Harp Composition Contest in 2019. As a performer and composer, Uno creates projects in which he highlights societal challenges through music, such as the climate crisis, violence against women, racism and queer sexuality. Uno has performed his projects at festivals in Europe, the USA and Asia, in concert halls such as Carnegie Hall in New York City and Het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. As a soloist, Uno has played with orchestras such as the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Arctic Philharmonic Sinfonietta, the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra and the Norwegian Wind Ensemble. Uno has released two albums of his own music, "Poems From a City" and "Oslo(ve)". 

Photo: Camilla Storvollen

Veslemøy Narvesen

Drummer, songwriter, singer and composer

Veslemøy Narvesen (b.1997) is known as one of the most exciting new names of the Norwegian jazzscene. She has collaborated with a number of different artists like Kit Downes, Mette Rasmussen's Trio North, Jacob Young, Mats Eilertsen, Anja Lauvdal, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten as well as being an active member of bands like Schemes Quartet, Dafnie, Kongle Trio and Mall Girl. In 2020 she was awarded the talent-prize for young jazz-musicians by Oslo Jazzfestival and in 2021 she won the prestigious Norwegian music-competition “Jazzintro” together with Kongle Trio. Veslemøy is inspired by jazz as well as rock/pop and classical music, which comes to show in her solo-project «We don't imagine anymore» where she composes, sings and play various instruments. The album was referred to as «the Autumn's finest Norwegian album" by Audun Vinger in Dagens Næringsliv.

Photo: Agnete Brun

Zakiya Ajmi

Writer

Zakiya Ajmi is a Danish writer who graduated from the Writers' School for Children's Literature at Aarhus University. She writes in many different genres and for different target groups – both picture books for young children, youth novels for teenagers, graphic novels and plays. In2022 she debuted with her first novel for an adult audience. The novel is called Delvist Møbleret (Partly furnished) and was nominated for the Danish Debutante Prize. It was also selected by the Statens Kunstfond to be the Danish participant in theEuropean First Novel Festival held in Kiel, Germany. In Denmark, she had her breakthrough as a writer in 2020, with the youth novel Vulkan. The novel was nominated for theMinistry of Culture's author prize and the Nordic Council's children's literature prize. The novel has been translated and sold in Norway (where it is published by Samlaget), as well as the Faroe Islands and Italy.

Photo: Agnete Brun