Ruben (he/him) is the Director of Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA). As director, he represents the foundation and leads OCA's work to strengthen international activity for contemporary art from Norway.
E-mail: ruben.steinum(a)oca.no
Team & Board
Staff
Eirik (he/him) is responsible for overseeing the financial and administrative processes and systems at OCA.
E-mail: eirik.zeiner-henriksen(a)oca.no
Hanne is responsible for the development and execution of OCA's public programme and publishing.
E-mail: hanne.mugaas(a)oca.no
Itzel (they/them) works with organising, coordinating, developing, and producing OCA's public programmes and projects, ensuring their successful execution.
E-mail: itzel.esquivel(a)oca.no
Piniel (she/her) works with planning, coordinating and executing OCA’s public programmes, including OCA’s library and its dissemination.
E-mail: piniel.demisse(a)oca.no
Kari Ane (she/her) has the responsibility for overseeing, implementing and developing the communication of OCA's activities.
E-mail: kari.ane.golf(a)oca.no
Michael (he/him) works to communicate OCA's activities by developing, publishing and producing content about OCA's activities.
E-mail: michael.miller(a)oca.no
Aurora (she/her) is responsible for the development, coordination, and execution of OCA's international visitors and network development programmes.
E-mail: aurora.aspen(a)oca.no
Anna (she/her) is Grants Officer responsible for administering OCA's grant schemes, organising the jury meetings, and is the contact person for applicants and grant recipients.
E-mail: anna.moe.jensen(a)oca.no
Anne Charlotte (she/her) is responsible for administering OCA's grant schemes. Anne Charlotte is working in a 50% position until the end of June.
E-mail: anne.charlotte.hauen(a)oca.no
Board Members
Trude Gomnæs Ugelstad is the Director of the Queen Sonja Print Award, the world’s leading award for graphic art. She was previously Artistic Director at Sørlandets kunstmuseum / Kunstsilo and has over 20 years of senior management roles at several national arts institutions in Norway. She has initiated and produced visual art and design projects in close collaboration with embassies in New York, Paris, Milan, London and Stockholm. She is working closely with the Norwegian Ministry of Culture and the Arts Council in Norway as chair for State Artist Grants. She served at the international and European board of World Crafts Council for six years.
Kristoffer Dolmen is Senior Curator at Nordlandmuseet in Bodø for their Bodø2024 program. He has worked at various art institutions in Northern Norway since 2001. He has also served on various boards and sat on a number of juries within the wider field of culture. Dolmen’s education includes master’s degree in curating and a cand. mag. degree in art history and cultural studies, both from the University of Bergen, and studies in museology and cultural management at Stockholm University. He has been part of a one year Post-Master program at The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.
Sille Storihle is an artist and educator working with moving images and printed matter. From 2012 to 2020 they ran the queer-feminist platform FRANK, together with Liv Bugge. Storihle holds a BFA from Trondheim Academy of Fine Art and an MA in Aesthetics and Politics from California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles, and is currently an Assistant Professor in Moving Images at Nordland School of Arts and Film. They have exhibited at M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Kunsthall Oslo, Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, GiBCA – Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art and Performa, New York, among others. From 2016 to 2020 they were on the board of UKS (Unge Kunstneres Samfund/Young Artists' Society).
Yngvill Aagaard Sjøøsten is the Head of Programming at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design. Yngvill has worked at the museum since 2009, holding several leadership roles, including overseeing the presentation of the new collection in the lead-up to the museum’s 2022 opening. In addition, Aagaard Sjøøsten has served as Head for Project Management and has many years of experience in exhibition production and network development. She holds an MA in Art History from the University of Oslo and has studied project management at BI, Norwegian Business School in Oslo.
Hans Marius Graasvold is an Oslo based attorney. He works mainly as legal counsel and adviser for a number of culture and artists´ organizations as well as for individual creative artists. He specializes in copyright, contract, privacy and organizational law. He is formal legal director of the Norwegian Consumer Council, and has extensive experience with representation in various boards and dispute resolution committees.
OCA Jury
Milena Høgsberg is a Copenhagen-based curator working across the Nordic region. She most recently served as Director and Chief Curator of the Wanås Foundation (2022–2025) in southern Sweden, where she commissioned works by international artists for the barns and sculpture park. She also initiated the Art & Words Festival, a sensory exploration of literature and art focused on more-than-human worlds and kinships. Together with Heidi Ballet, Høgsberg curated I Taste the Future, LIAF 2017 in Henningsvær, Lofoten. Between 2011-17, she curated soloand group exhibitions with artists such as Omer Fast, Lea Porsager, Ann Cathrin November Høibo, Torbjørn Rødland, and Lotte Konow Lund, at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, where she served as Chief Curator. She currently works independently on exhibitions, including at Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (spring 2027), and on public art commissions in a curatorial advisory role for the New Carlsberg Foundation.
Miriam Wistreich is the director of UKS – (Unge Kunstneres Samfund / Young Artists’ Society), an Oslo-based institution for contemporary art and a Norwegian membership organization. Founded by artists for artists in 1921, UKS has since established itself as one of Norway’s core experimental venues for the arts; convening, exhibiting, and supporting critical voices of contemporary artists, with the objective of having both an artistic and political impact within and beyond its region.
Wistreich’s current interests revolve around questions of infrastructure; how to build and sustain art spaces and structures that create more caring and equitable institutions. She was previously Artistic Director at Hotel Maria Kapel, an artist-in-residence and exhibition space in Hoorn, NL. As part of the Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, a curatorial platform for planetary becoming, she co-curated the 2020 biennial Alt_Cph: Patterns in Resistance in Copenhagen, DK. She is an alumnus of De Appel Curatorial Programme and has previously worked with organisations such as I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want to be Part of Your Revolution and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, NL and SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, DK.
Dušan Barok is an artist based in Oslo, working across research, curating and publishing. He is co-founder of Monoskop.org and co-host of the Multiplace community server. He studied networked media, heritage and memory in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. His recent work includes exhibition and research projects with nGbK, Torpedo, Kunstraum Lakeside, the Walker Art Center, TU Berlin, tranzit.sk, the Olomouc Museum of Art, Vašulka Kitchen Brno, and M+.
Robel Temesgen is an artist and researcher whose practice spans painting, installation, performance, and publication. His work explores the symbiotic relationships between people, places, and spiritual traditions, often engaging with vernacular knowledge systems and the metaphysical dimensions of everyday life. Temesgen’s long-term projects, including Adbar, Addis Newspaper, and Practising Water, investigate how cultural memory and ritual shape public space and collective experience.
Temesgen is currently a PhD fellow in Artistic Research at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Since 2010, he has served as a lecturer in the Painting department at the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design, Addis Ababa University.
Deputies
Zippora Elders (b. 1986) is a curator, writer and art historian. Zippora is Senior Curator at Van Abbenmuseum and previously was Chief Curator and Head of Curatorial Department of Gropius Bau, Berlin. Before that, she was, amongst others, the director of Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, co-curator of Sonsbeek20-24 Force Times Distance and curator at Foam museum for photography. She has been working for several museums, art academies and magazines and is a regular advisor, jury member and lecturer for cultural organisations, including as a board member in the field of journalism, crossover, nightlife and contemporary music.
Noor Bhangu is a curator and scholar, whose practice is rooted in relational curatorial aesthetics and practices. Her past curatorial projects include Homorientalism (2023) at Smack Mellon, Has My Place Forgotten Me? (2024) at Kistefos, and Deviant Ornaments (2025-26) at Nasjonalmuseet.
In 2026, she completed her PhD in Communication and Culture at Toronto Metropolitan University and York University in Tkaronto, Toronto. Her dissertation investigates cultures of sexuality within Islamic visual culture to develop a queer genealogy, linking the past to the contemporary.
Øystein Aasan, born 1977 in Trondheim, grew up in Kristiansand. Lives and works in Berlin. Øystein Aasan's work includes sculptures, installations, handmade books, archives, collage, architecture and text. His work explores the relationship between memory and time, architectural memory and the role of the viewer in relation to the work. Øystein Aasan has his education from KHIO, Oslo and has had institutional exhibitions at, among others: Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo; Migros Museum, Zurich, Liverpool Biennale, GAM, Turin; Kunsthalle Lingen; Kunstverein Arnsberg; La Vitrine, Paris; FRAC, Rennes; Fotogalleriet, Oslo; Sørlandets Kunst Museum, Kristiansand; Stenersen Museum, Oslo and Momentum Biennale, Moss. He has published texts and essays in several international magazines, books and catalogues. Aasan has lived and worked in Berlin since 2002.