Artist
Ilavenil Vasuky Jayapalan
Ilavenil Vasuky Jayapalan (b. 1991) is a transdisciplinary artist based in Oslo, Norway. Exploring mechanisms of national consciousness; notions of freedom, truth and desire; and speculative futures that draw from the fringes of society, Jayaplan’s works are heavily inspired by worlds of cinema, music and media. A longtime collaborator of artists like M.I.A, Christopher Kulendran Thomas and Annika Kuhlmann, his collaborative works have been shown at a host of international music festivals – from London’s ICA to Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art. His personal work, meanwhile, has been exhibited in several Norwegian institutions, and at Tokyo’s Sezon Art Gallery.
The work of Dev Dhunsi is inspired by the migratory movement of his family from South Asia. His photo-installation Ankhon Dekhi (2022) touches upon the complexity of society with its many -scapes (landscape, soundscape, mediascape) and the materiality of his photographic approach spans different media from textile to sculptural installation. As a subject with a complex historiography and layered diasporic knowledge, he focuses on the sociological character of photography.
Paulina Tamara's commitment to photography as a means of representation is manifold. Her work comprises longstanding work with youth, exploring what they're coming to know in expressing their sexuality and gender freely. In Undress, looking at a queer woman undressing (2021), Tamara invited 15 people to watch her undressing while took pictures of the session with a trigger – an exercise in looking when both taking and giving complete control over the image.
Naina Helén Jåma is a photographer working for influential Norwegian newspapers and magazines. She started her career as a South Sámi mediator in Jåhkåmåhkke at the Ájtte Museum at 13, and continues to maintain a close relationship with traditional Sámi arts. In her project Vætnoe (2018–), Jåma speaks about traditional forms in living matter in Sámi people's livelihood, and how these forms and shapes continue to be part of the technological availability of today.
Ilavenil Vasuky Jayapalan is a dissenting multidisciplinary artist. As a child of the Tamil Tigers ,and the subject of echoes of the traumatic effects of civil war, he ponders a postcolonial take on propaganda. Among the works Jayapalan has shared for FUTURES is Hello freeends 4.1 (2022), a self-portrait crafted through AI manipulation, based on what a South Asian person looks like to a machine when fed bits of information.
Bobby Yu Shuk Pui grounds her work in the queer and genderless exploration of body politics, with a critical perspective on the social norms and constructs dictating reproduction and beautification – pushed to the forefront of the capitalist agenda in Asia, where Pui began her work. In the ongoing Genetic Salon (2020–), Put presents a web of video clips, exhibitions, and other material, leading the audience into a seductive imagination of the future.