Visitors 2023

Håkon Lillegraven (b.1992) is a curator, art writer, and art mediator based in Oslo, Norway. His curatorial interests are in the intersections of queer, temporal, performance-based, and moving image-based work, collaboration, community-building, and the curatorial strategies and ethics surrounding these. He works with this as an independent curator, writer, and founding member of two nomadic curatorial initiatives focused on queer, feminist and communal practices, Ergi and Geiten. Since 2020, he has held a position at Fotogalleriet, the first institution dedicated to photography as a critical artistic practice in the Nordic region, which is currently working to create new structures to facilitate new curatorial voices in the Nordic cultural field. His education includes foundation courses in film and theatre production and a degree in Culture, Criticism and Curation from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

In 2022, Lillegraven curated the exhibition and performance programme PARADE together with curator Bjørn Hatterud for the Vigeland Museum in Oslo. He also curated the performance project T with artist Marianne Heier, shown at the feminist art annex Femidomen, founded by Marie Askeland, and programmes for Kunsthall Trondheim, Haugar Kunstmuseum, and Kunstnerforbundet. In 2021, he was Associate Curator for the 11th edition of the Momentum Biennial organised by Galleri F15, a participant in the programme ’Curatorial practice+public space' organised by KORO (Public Art Norway), and Managing Editor for the publication 'Conversations on Photography' (ed. Antonio Cataldo) with over 50 contributors. Since 2020, in his role as Head of Mediation and Communication for Fotogalleriet, he has worked with projects by Dora García, Maryam Jafri, Fin Serck-Hanssen, Brittany Nelson, Victoria Verseau, and more, with curator and Artistic Director Antonio Cataldo. In 2018-2020, he worked with projects by artists Carole Douillard, Javier Izquierdo, Marianne Heier, Mette Edvardsen, and more, as Curatorial Assistant for Oslo Biennial First Edition, curated by Eva González-Sancho Bodero and Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk. In 2018 he was awarded a grant from Art Fund UK to participate in the course ‘Curating Events and Public Programme’ at Whitechapel Gallery, and in 2017 the British Council Venice Biennale Steward-Research Fellowship.

As a writer he has been published in Kunstkritikk — the leading Nordic journal of contemporary art, Norwegian weekly Morgenbladet, Billedkunst art journal and queer discursive platform Karmaklubb*, founded by Tine Semb. He is co-founder of the nomadic exhibition platform Ergi with Una Mathiesen Gjerde, Marin Håskjold, Herman Breda Enkerud and Niels Munk Plum, and the domestic exhibition platform Geiten with Christina Nilseng.

Sandra Mujinga (b. 1989, Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Lives and works in Berlin and Oslo) was included in the recent Venice Biennial (The Milk of Dreams curated by Cecilia Alemani) and her solo exhibition IBMSWR is currently on view at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. In March and April her work will be included in group shows at MoMA, New York; Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin; and at CAPC, Bordeaux. Recent solo exhibitions include Malmö Konsthall; MUNCH, Oslo (both 2022); Swiss Institute, New York (2021); Vleeshal, Middelburg (2020); and Bergen Kunsthall (2019). Current and recent group shows include Moderna Museet, Malmö (current); Foundation Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2022); The New Museum Triennial, New York; Fondazione Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Momenta Biennial, Montréal; ICA, LA (all 2021), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Boros Foundation / Berghain, Berlin; and Kunstverein Hannover (2021).

Sandra Mujinga plays with economies of visibility and opacity, negotiating questions of identity, self-representation and surveillance, working across text, sculpture, performance, and dance as well as the internet and the digital image. Her practice has been described as questioning “what it means to exist in the dark,” highlighting the conflicting nature of visibility, which, whilst serving as an ever-expansive platform for promoting diversity and difference, simultaneously increases unwanted surveillance and data collection. To combat this, the artist suggests that humans need to become more adaptable to their environments, exploring within her work the survival strategies employed by animals that change their bodily features to adapt to their surroundings. Mujinga is deeply inspired by science-fiction, Afrofuturism and the idea of the ‘post-human’ as a speculative and political gaze envisioning alternative worlds at the intersection of technology, the human and the animal.