Eda Aslan (*1993, Istanbul) is an artist and researcher based in Hamburg. She studied sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Marmara University and received her master's degree in the Department of Painting at the same institution. She is currently pursuing her master's degree in Time Based Media at HFBK Hamburg with a DAAD scholarship. In her works, she deals with abandoned spaces, narratives, archives and testimonies that have been omitted, forgotten or unrecorded in historiography, at the intersection of personal and collective memory. Aslan's individual and collective projects have been supported by various grants, including the Hamburgische Kulturstiftung (2024), Hamburger Projektförderung Förderung Bildende Kunst (2023), Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius Kunststipendium (2022), SALT Research Funds (2018) Her work has been exhibited on various platforms, including the Jewish Museum Franken, DEPO Istanbul, Kunsthaus Hamburg, the 4th Mardin Biennial and the Kunstverein in Hamburg.
Nurgül Dursun (*1990, Bregenz) first completed her bachelor's degree in architecture at the University of Liechtenstein in 2012 and then worked as an architect and scenographer in Mexico City and Berlin. From 2015 to 2020 she studied Fine Arts at the HFBK Hamburg in the class of Thomas Demand, including a semester abroad at Marmara University in Istanbul in 2017. She has been a member of the Künstler*innenhaus FRISE e.V. in Hamburg since 2023.
Luca Laurora (*1995, Italy) studied sculpture in Milan and completed a Master of fine Arts in Time-based Media at HFBK Hamburg. His work explores the immaterial dimensions of perception—language, time, sound, smell, and light—while critically examining the economic models shaping art production and consumption. Currently, he experiments with grassroots, non-commercial approaches to cultural production.
Tanja Nis-Hansen (*1988, Denmark) lives and works in Berlin. She studied in Copenhagen and Vienna before achieving both her BFA (2016) and MFA (2018) at HFBK Hamburg under the supervision of professor Jutta Koether.
Working between the mediums of painting, text, and performance, Nis-Hansen takes as her subject the body's presence amid contemporary capitalism - anxious, waiting, resting, ill or non-functioning. Her semi-autobiographical works, which explore motifs including waiting rooms, spiral staircases, moments of rest, and text statements, invite the viewer to think about female labor, exhaustion, illness, bodily maintenance, heritage, and the environment. Perceptible throughout Nis-Hansen's stylistically diverse oeuvre is an abiding curiosity about the history of painting and the social construction of hierarchies of taste. The artist evinces a fascination for theater and stage design, which in her paintings surfaces not only through the inner logic of space on the canvas, but also through an all over "theatrical" mode of representation.
Tanja Nis-Hansen has had solo exhibitions at Galerie im Turm, Berlin (with Yen Chun Lin) (2024); Solito - Galleria S2 (2023); palace enterprise, Copenhagen (2023); Vestjyllands Kunstpavillon, Videbæk (2022); Sans titre, Paris (2022 and 2019); Udstillingsstedet Sydhavn Station, Copenhagen (2019); HFBK, Hamburg (2018); Come Over chez Malik's, Hamburg (2017). In 2025, the artist will have two solo shows at Kasseler Kunstverein Museen, Kassel and Sans titre, Paris.
Fion Pellacini (*1986) is a visual artist, musician and composer of German, Brazilian and Italian nationality. After studying philosophy at the University of Cologne, he graduated from the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg (HFBK) with Prof. Andreas Slominski and Prof. Hanne Loreck (2011 – 2017). His sculptural, performative and musical works refer to and embrace different social groups, reflecting physical, spatial and social conditions. In 2023 he received the Förderpreis Junge Kunst award of Kunstverein Siegen. In 2024 he recieved a travel grant of Kunststiftung NRW. He lives and works in Hamburg, Dortmund and São Paulo.
Nicholas Odhiambo Mboya (*1992, Kisumu, KE) attended the Mwangaza School of Fine Arts, where he graduated with a diploma in Fine Arts and Design in 2015 and is currently studying for a master's degree in art at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts (HFBK). Nikomambo started as a painter before venturing into mixed media. He is a multidisciplinary artist whose expansive skill set includes using photographs, texts, and found objects to recreate graphic images, sculptural forms, and site-specific kinetic artworks. Currently, Nikomambo's artistic and conceptual interests reflect his ontological observation between Africa and Europe mainly focused on Germany and his country Kenya on issues such as Religion, economy, language, land, and identity politics to uncover underlying repetitive patterns that foster habits leading to cultural and traditional norms between these two peripheries. Nikomambo has taken part in numerous exhibitions in Kenya and abroad as well as in workshops and art residencies, e.g., Brush Tu Art Studio and Untethered Magic Studio, recently at Kunsthaus Hamburg.
Asma Ben Slama is an artist from Tunis, Tunisia. She holds a degree from HFBK Hamburg and studied at Städelschule (DE), CalArts (US), and the School of Multimedia and Art Manouba (TN).
- 9 to 5
- A Question of Time
- Anne Meerpohl
Ambivalent demands on time and how it can be organised characterise our everyday lives. We should be mindful of ourselves, of our own work, slow down and at the same time always remain productive, constantly developing new things. Artistic production is also confronted with social narratives of speed and acceleration. It is not uncommon for the work realities of young artists in particular to become entangled between the fixed structures of wage labour and the fluid timetable of artistic exploration. Time can describe something concrete or abstract, sometimes it means a fixed framework, an open window, marks a transition, an intermediate space or it refers to the past.
What different perceptions and perspectives on time and temporality move artists in the environment of an art academy and what aesthetic questions develop from this? Which artistic perspectives are emerging on the current ambivalences of deceleration and productivity?
Six artistic positions question various aspects of temporality, narratives of linearity and chronology, finiteness, working conditions and time pressure in this exhibition at the ICAT - Institute for Contemporary Art & Transfer of the HFBK Hamburg.
