In total 30 artists will take up residencies across all venues in 2022, as part of the In from the Margins programme. 22 artists have seen selected thus far, with more to be announced at Cork Printmakers and Funen Printmaking Studio in the coming months. The selected artists will have the opportunity to work in a print medium of their choice and will be supported to develop their practice over a month-long residency. Scroll down to read their biographies and find out more about their work.
Edinburgh printmakers
Edinburgh, Scotland
Zory Shahrokhi is a British-Iranian visual artist based in Greater London. She was born in Tehran and grew up in brutal poverty within a country that harbours a massive class divide and gender inequality. Her initial art training was with renowned teacher Ebrahim Jafari, who was a poet, artist and lecturer. Zory's early work reflects her personal experiences and emotions through the abstract expression of the belaboured female body. Her practice developed through a concern for exploring cultural and political agendas, employing performance in relation to installation, photography and drawing. Through experimental work and symbolic expression, she investigates issues and perception around freedom related to displacement, exploitation, and gender oppression.
Arafa and the Dirars are an artists' collective based in Hull. Born in West Sudan the Dirars family was resettled as refugees to the UK in 2015 through the UN Gateway Protection Programme. Having fled the war in Libya and during four years in a refugee camp in Egypt, they used the time waiting for a decision on their future to develop their skills in drawing, painting, and poetry. Today they use their art to reflect on their journey, share their story with others, and draw attention to the ongoing plight of millions of people fleeing war and persecution.
Mousa AlNana is a Glasgow based Syrian artist working in painting, print and graphic design. A Fine Art graduate from Damascus University and Master's Graduate from Glasgow School of Art, Mousa's work draws from his own experiences showing humanity in its different colours and its vulnerable stages, under rough surfaces and delicate lines. Using collage techniques and monochromatic style Mousa aims to share what lies between the human soul.
Najma Abukar is a Somali born, Glasgow based photographer documenting cultural and gender identities, the African diaspora, and immigrant experiences. She is passionate about curating, archiving, and re-focusing the untold narratives of those underrepresented and marginalized. Being a first-generation migrant woman of African heritage, her photographic body of work focuses on the strife and resilience of the Other. Najma's practice is concerned with issues of identity, belonging and (self) representation within the Scottish landscape.
Aqsa Arif is a Scottish-Pakistani interdisciplinary artist based in Glasgow. Her work incorporates the interdisciplinary mediums of poetry, printmaking, installation and film to construct complex structures in which she explores the surreal nature of the human psyche. As a Pakistani refugee to Scotland, she has described her experience as a life with the split of two cultural identities. This polarity underpins her work and is manifested through her use of film. Printmaking also plays a significant role in her practice. By re-moulding its two-dimensional plane within her three-dimensional surreal world, she personifies the medium within her structures. Since graduating from the Glasgow School of Art in 2019, Aqsa has exhibited her work in Gallery of Modern Art, Jupiter Artland, Royal Scottish Academy and Tate Modern. She is also the co-founder of Salt Space Co-operative in Glasgow.
Paria Goodarzi is an Iranian born artist, her practice revolves around cultural and political transfers and translocations, the ideas of the contemporary human condition, cultural identity and political issues that result in an ambivalent coexistence of civilised life, conflict, and displacement. Her work examines the hybrid condition of our society and the processes of formation, performance, and representation of identity through a multidisciplinary practice that often takes the shape of participatory and socially engaged artworks. Paria is a UNESCO RILA Affiliated Artist and co-founder of the art initiative 'Distanced Assemblage' with the aim of making a positive impact in the wellbeing and visibility of people from diverse cultural and social backgrounds by providing opportunities to engage with creative practice.
AGA LAB
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Barbara Miše is an artist from Croatia, based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She completed her undergraduate studies in Animation and New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, and is currently writing-up her Master’s thesis in Illustration at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
She works in the fields of printmaking, illustration, animation and sound design. In her recent work she is trying to understand and address the subjective experiences of memory recollection, preservation and its deterioration. She likes to think about objects and their absence as signifyers of the past, and the value and power we attribute to them.
Her work has been featured recently in sound art and film festivals (Sound Art Inkubator, 2016, Zagreb, Croatia; Sine Linea 2017, Zagreb; Floating Castle festival 2020 & 2021, Grad Snežik, Slovenia; ANIMATEKA, Ljubljana, 2020), as well as on a number of group exhibitions and film screenings in Croatia and Slovenia.
Raul Balai a.k.a. elbastardo, is an Amsterdam based artist.Balai is fascinated by the way our exploitative state of mind frames the shape of the world. How this is present in the everyday and the everywhere, and the way the media and academia repeat and portray our world as part of the western ‘situation’, its peoples bravado and its countries heroism.
He uses a number of different styles, genres, to expose and explore what remains at stake within the history of diversities. While reworking these subjects in a lighthearted ‘nod and a wink’ manner, underneath this strategy are serious concerns. By doing so he is ensuring a chatter of ideas and ideals, providing a constant ebb and flow for the context to resonate with the viewer. This attitude has a distinctive place in his approach. Not only as an artist or curator, but also in his practice as an exhibition maker and designer.
He is an artist who cannot be relegated to one style, one genre, one anything. His work is not characterized by a specific shape or material. He is looking at each topic and story and finds appropriate form. Constantly refining his visual and conceptual vocabulary that emerges through points of intersection between painting, installations, sculptures, graffiti, (graphic) design, illustration, video and photography.
In recent years Balai has exhibited at Countour Biennale – Mechelen, Belgium / Biennale Dak’Art – Senegal / M HKA – Antwerpen, Belgium / Galleri Image- Aarhus, Denmark / NEST – The Hague, The Netherlands / WM Gallery – Amsterdam, The Netherlands / The Black Archives – Amsterdam, The Netherlands / The Rembrandt Museum – Amsterdam, The Netherlands / a.o.
Ehsan Fardjandiya is a visual and performance artist. Over the past 10 years of practising, he has developed a method of emancipatory art whereby socio-political relations can be treated as performative practices to impact larger public opinions and political issues. Departing from Situationist art practices where interventions are temporary and from the outside, in his method Fardjadniya makes interventions from within where his body is situated with the focus towards the emancipation of himself and others in his situation. Art and activism merge in his work as a reflection of the politicisation of his body as a person of colour and a political exile. 'Because of my personal experience as a refugee, struggling with institutional racism, precarious stories about migration go through my body, making it an archive of stories that howls throughout my art.'
In 2000, due to his political cartoons, Fardjadniya was exiled from Iran and consequently applied for refugee status in the Netherlands. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Art in The Hague in 2006, followed by a two-year Master degree on art as politics with a particular focus on migration and refugee rights at Goldsmiths University of London. He has since been working full-time as an independent artist, working on various collaborative and solo performances. Currently he is working in Greece as a journalist next to his independent documentary film on the issue of increasing militarization of borders, criminalization and incarceration of refugees.
FUNEN PRINTMAKING STUDIO
Odense, Denmark
Rezan Arab is a Syrian artist based in Denmark since 2014. He holds a Master’s in Fine Arts from The National university of Arts in Bucharest (Romania) and a BA in Fine Arts, department of oil painting from Damascus university (Syria). He is one of the artists members of All Art Now Organization. Having been featured in many exhibitions throughout Syria and Europe, he is the recipient of several awards.
He recently held solo exhibitions under the title Out of time and space (Konstframjandet Varmland, Karlstad, Sweden 2021) and Still life ahead (All Art Now Lab, Stockholm, Sweden 2020). He has also recently presented his works at Supermarket Art Fair (Stockholm, Sweden), Lokomotivværkstedet Art Fair (Copenhagen, Denmark) and featured in group exhibitions such us Thoughts on a vague road (Havremagasinet, Boden, Sweden 2021), Catastrophe, Office of emergency (online exhibition, Copenhagen, Denmark 2020) and Something can happen beyond expectation (KonsthallSpisrummet, Karlsatd, Sweden 2019).
Naila Hekmat is a Syrian artist based in Denmark since 2014, She holds a BA in Arts and Humanities from Aleppo university in Syria, and is currently studying a Master’s in Fine Arts at Funen Art Academy in Odense (Denmark). She works mostly with paintings, with different subjects.
She has participated in several exhibitions in Syria and Denmark. She has recently held a solo exhibition at Rasmus Gallery (Odense, Denmark,2021) and participated in Lokomotivværkstedet Art Fair (Copenhagen, Denmark).
Dareen Abbas is a Syrian visual artist that lives and works in Berlin. She studied graphics in Damascus University of Fine-Arts and in 2015 she received a Master degree in arts from ERG School of graphic research in Brussels, where she focussed on system theory and history of cybernetics in relation to memory and cinema. Since then, Abbas has participated in various exhibitions and residencies such as Taipei Biennale 2016, as well as WIELS Art Centre- project room 2020 among others.
INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR GRAPHIC ARTS
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Azad Karim is a Slovenian/Kurdish/Iraqi artist. He studied at the Baghdad College of Fine Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. He completed his postgraduate studies in Printmaking and has been working as a painter and a graphic designer in Slovenia for almost thirty years. After his training in Baghdad, he took courses in many different cultural cities in Europe, before finally settling in Slovenia. He combines his eastern and western experiences of the world. His artworks are fraught with impressions and symbols, duality and synthesis of two worlds. However, in the last ten years, he has increasingly focused on the themes of refugees, war, destruction of artefacts and personal memories associated with the experience of displacement.
He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions both in Slovenia and abroad and received several awards for his work. Azad Karim lives and works in Ajdovščina, Slovenia.
Qëndresë Deda is a Kosovo born artist, currently living between Prishtinë, Kosova and Ljubljana. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prishtinë in 2010 and later from the Video & New Media programme at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. In her practice, Deda combines different media, from photography, drawing, writing and design, to video, often taking on the role of an object and a subject simultaneously. She is interested in the place of the camera in contemporary life and the transfer of images from one medium to another. Although her work seems very personal, even intimate, she is concerned with the phenomena of her immediate environment, as she describes it.
She has a background as a refugee from when she was 10 years old. "Because of my experience, I question whether it is ethical to involve other people to open up about these sensitive issues," she explains.
She would like to form groups of people to participate in her residency project and make handmade prints on fabric as this process is more engaging and personal. This may include creating artwork by recycling and printing on clothes or everyday objects that already have a history of their own.
Maja Živko was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she graduated from the Department of Printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts, before continuing her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana.
In recent years, she has been exploring the concept of liminal space in her own vision as well as the feelings she experiences in daily life around certain people and the meaning and influence these people have on the spaces she feels deeply connected to.
She says:
"I am interested in the project In From the Margins because all my life I have been told stories about people who migrated during the war in Bosnia. And after the war, most people tried to migrate, and even now people of my generation are just waiting for an opportunity to leave the country. Living in a country where the only future is the future of immigrants, I think I can explore this issue with empathy and understanding."
Azadeh Hashemzadeh was born in Iran. She graduated in Photography and worked in different companies as a photo editor, video editor and photographer from 2004 to 2011. In 2011, she founded her own photography company. In 2018, she moved to Slovenia with her husband to apply for asylum and was granted permanent status in 2019. Now she lives and works in Ljubljana. Communicating with people from other countries helps her improve her language skills so she can continue her education in Interior Design in Ljubljana.
She is also very motivated to work as a photographer and photo editor, volunteering to photograph asylum seekers and refugees. In her application for In From the Margins, she emphasised that she would like to focus on photography in the context of her work experience and expand her knowledge into printmaking.
Francisco Tomsich is an artist an author born in Uruguay. Since 2003, he has produced exhibitions, publications, stage works, research models and educational tools, working with different media, languages and tongues. He has co-founded and integrated many non-disciplinary artist associations in South America and Europe and participated in the 7th MERCOSUR Biennial (2009) and the 1st Montevideo Biennial (2012).
Tomsich moved to Slovenia in 2014. Since then, he has been developing the artistic research project Talgia, which deals with the study, adoption, use and manipulation of elements of culture, history and art practices from the former Yugoslav countries and the relations between them and their counterparts in the southern zone of South America. Between 2014 and 2019, he was actively engaged in working with refugee and migrant communities in Slovenia and the Balkan region.
Lina Rica is a Croatian intermedia artist currently living and working in Ljubljana. Rica works in the field of installation with video, printmaking, photography and animation. Her work deals with the social processes of past and present worlds and their influence on the contemporary individual. She obtained her master's degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 2008 with an award for best graduation thesis in the Printmaking Department.
In 2012, she launched the artist-run project GaleRica. Since 2010, Lina has been performing at various venues, combining real-time generated animations with captured and live videos. Together with other artists, she formed the audiovisual acoustic and electronic noise ensemble Marta Fakuch in 2019. From 2020, she is part of the audiovisual trio Etceteral.
