Artists Nayab Ikram and Andrew Gryf Paterson will participate in Frame’s orientation trip to the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan in autumn 2019. The call for the trip was open to art professionals and artists based in Finland.
From October 20 to November 2 the destinations are the United Arab Emirates (Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah) and Pakistan (Karachi and Lahore).
The purpose of the trips is to familiarise visual artists and art mediators to cultural regions and contemporary art that they have not encountered in their earlier work. Frame joins an orientation trip organised by the Mondriaan Fund in collaboration with the Danish Arts Foundation and the Swiss Pro Helvetia.
Ikram and Paterson will be travelling in a group of art professionals and artists from the Netherlands, Switzerland and Denmark including: Researcher, curator, and writer Katayoun Arian (NL), Advisor Visual Arts at Danish Arts Foundation Ane Bülow (DK); Curator, researcher and academic advisor Pauline Burmann (NL); Art historian, curator and chairman at FSK – The Association for Contemporary Art Mikkel Elming (DK); Artist, curator, teacher and co-director at 1646, Johan Gustavsson; Senior curator at Copenhagen Contemporary Jannie Haagemann (DK); Curator and Deputy Director at Museum of art of Nidwaldner Patrizia Keller (CH), Director at the Mondriaan Fund Eelco van der Lingen (NL); Artist Kianoosh Motallebi (NL); Office member at Centre d’art Neuchatel, CAN Nicolas Raufaste (CH); Senior project officer, international relations at Mondriaan Fund Haco de Ridder (NL); Artistic director of the Centraal Museum Bart Rutten (NL), and Artist Marilyn Sonneveld (NL).
During the trip, participants keep a blog with descriptions of the locations visited.
Biographies
Nayab Ikram is a photographer, visual artist and artist-curator of Pakistani diaspora from the Åland Islands, based in Turku.
Ikram’s works deal with feeling of in-betweenship, cultural identity, collective memory and post-internet. Using symbols, rituals and abstract form of expressions, she explores these notions through photography, performance and installations.
Ikram graduated with a Bachelor of Culture and Arts degree in 2015, majoring in photography, from Novia University of Applied Sciences in Jakobstad, Finland. Together with multidisciplinary artist Ramina Habibollah, she also forms the curatorial duo in a way.
Ikram has had numerous solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions. She has exhibited her work at The Åland Islands Art Museum (2018), the Embassy of Pakistan in Brussels, Belgium (2017), Platform Nord, Norway (2017) Rotterdam Photo Festival, The Netherlands (2017) and Moderna Museet, Sweden (2016).
In 2017 she was the winner of the Portfolio Review for Young Nordic Photographers at Landskrona Foto Festival. In 2019 she was awarded with a culture prize from the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.
(Photo: Marta Anna Løvberg, Arts Council Norway)
Andrew Gryf Paterson is an artist-organiser, cultural producer, educator and independent researcher. He specialises exploring connections between art, digital culture and science, cultural activism, ecological and sustainability movements, along with cultural heritage and collaborative networks.
Originally from Scotland, Paterson has an international practice, including activity over the past 16 years in the Baltic Sea region, and based for most of the time in Helsinki, Finland. He works across the fields of media/ network/ environmental arts and activism, pursuing a participatory practice through workshops, performative events, and storytelling.
His main involvement of recent years has been with Pixelache Helsinki node of Pixelache Network. Within Pixelache, he was most recently involved in the collaborative work-group project Ferment Lab (2015-2018) and BioSignals (2018- 2019).
Paterson has a multi-disciplinary education, with BA (Hons) Fine Arts from Glasgow School of Art (1997), and a MSc degree in Computer-Aided Graphical Technology Applications from University of Teesside (2001).
Image: Otobong Nkanga and Emeka Ogboh: Aging Ruins Dreaming Only to Recall the Hard Chisel from the Past, 2019. Installation view: Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber. Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation. Courtesy of the artists. Courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation.