Amplify — Stranger in the Village: Afro European Matters

These manifestations attend to the material and affective afterlives of Denmark’s colonial impact in the Caribbean and participation in the Transatlantic Slave Trade—realities that have all too often been rendered forgettable by dominant history-writing.

In the words of author Lesley-Ann Brown, ‘Ehlers reminds all who participate in or gaze at her work that history is not in the past’. In her conceptual art practice, Ehlers insists on the possibility for empowerment and healing, honoring legacies of resistance in the African diaspora. She merges the historical, the collective and the rebellious with the familial, the bodily and the poetic.

She has exhibited internationally and was shortlisted to create a national monument to The Windrush Generation at London Waterloo Station 2022. Ehlers is also the co-creator of the public sculpture project I Am Queen Mary (2018; in collaboration with La Vaughn Belle).  Selected exhibitions include Dak'Art – The Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African Art, Senegal; Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), USA; Autograph ABP, Rivington Place, London, UK; Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), Toronto, Canada; National Gallery of Denmark (SMK), Copenhagen, Denmark; Nuuk Art Museum, Greenland; Berliner Herbstsalon, Berlin, Germany;  Oslo Art Society, Oslo, Norway;  Ford Foundation Gallery, NYC, USA; Savvy Contemporary Berlin, Germany; The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Finland; Canton Gallery, Guangzhou, China; Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Los Angeles, USA; The International Slavery Museum, Liverpool, UK; Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland; The Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, USA; and El Museo Del Barrio, New York, USA.

Huber frequently reclaims – aware of its symbolic significance – the compressed-air staple gun as an artistic ‘weapon’, tapping into its potential to renegotiate unequal power dynamics. She is known for her artistic research contribution to the Demounting Louis Agassiz campaign which aims to dismantle the glaciologist’s lesser-known but contentious racist heritage. Huber also often works in a creative partnership with artist Petri Saarikko with whom she initiated the long-term project Remedies Universe.

Huber holds an MA in visual culture from the Aalto University and is presently undertaking a practice-based PhD at Zurich University of the Arts. Huber has had numerous solo presentations, artist residencies and participated in international exhibitions and festivals, including the 56th Venice Biennial in 2015. In 2021 Huber’s solo exhibition tour YOU NAME IT began at Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam and continues to The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto; Autograph in London in 2022/23; and Turku Art Museum in Finland in 2023. In 2018 the Arts Promotion Centre Finland awarded Huber the State Art Award in the category visual arts and in 2022 she received a multi-year artist grant.

Often conceptual and research-based, De Miranda is interested in the convergence of socio-political narratives, gender, and memory at the boundaries between fiction and documentary.

De Miranda is affiliated with the University of Lisbon where she is engaged on projects dealing with ethical and cultural aspects of contemporary migration movements linked to lusophone Africa, such as Post-Archive: Politics of Memory, Place and Identity, and Visual Culture, Migration, Globalization and Decolonization.  She holds post and undergraduate degrees in art and arts education from Camberwell College of Arts and the Institute of Education in London, and a doctorate in Visual Art from the University of Middlesex. De Miranda is a co-founder of the artist residency project Triangle Network in Portugal and in 2014, she founded Hangar – Center for Artistic Research in Lisbon

Her works have been exhibited internationally, including at the 12th Berlin Biennale (2022); Bienalsur – International Contemporary Art Biennial from the South (2020); Houston FotoFest Biennial (2020); Lubumbashi Biennale (2020); Dakar Biennale (2016); Bamako Encounters African Biennale of Photography (2016); and the 14th Architecture Biennale of Venice (2014) as well as in museums and galleries such as the Pera Museum in Istambul (2017) and Caixa Cultural in Rio de Janeiro (2017). Her work is represented in public collections including The Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon, Portugal.

You can follow the artist on Instagram and see more of De Miranda's work on her website.