YOUNG SAMI ARTIST OF THE YEAR EXHIBITION

Elina Waage MIKALSEN

20. January 2016

Elina Waage Mikalsen (b. 1992) is a multidisciplinary artist and musician. She works with performance, textiles, installation and text, often connected to sound and sound-practice. Her artistic work is often based on her Norwegian and Sami background. The meeting between the Norwegian and the Sami in her own family becomes a picture of the power relations that haunt our society as a whole. In her work, this intimate view of society becomes a platform to explore themes related to identity and exclusion. In her sound work, she often combines her voice with field recordings, electronics and self- built instruments to create sound spaces that exist somewhere between reality and fantasy. It is the emotional and narrative properties of sound that interest her, and how sound can function as a time machine that causes time to collapse and sets both future and past in motion. Mikalsen completed her MFA at the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo in 2021. In 2015, Mikalsen was named ‘Young Artist of the Year’ at the international indigenous festival Riddu Riđđu, which resulted in this exhibition at Small Projects in 2016. Since then, Elina has participated in a number of group exhibitions and performance programs. She currently lives and works in Oslo, Norway.