2020
Country: NO
SOUNDCLOUD INSTAGRAM VIMEO

Elina Waage Mikalsen is a multidisciplinary artist and musician from Tromsø, Sápmi/Norway. She is currently based in Oslo, Norway, working within the fields of sound, video, performance, installation and text-based mediums. Her core source of material is the body, in its physical, remembering, sounding and acting capacity. She explores the woman’s body in particular, most notably in her sound work, where the possibilities and limitations of the female voice is explored in a physical, historical and gendered context. Based on this investigation, she explores the frictions and connections between the female body and the female voice, which are so often separated. Elina Waage Mikalsen’s artistic work often draws inspiration from her dual background as Sámi and Norwegian. The meeting between the Norwegian and Sámi heritages within her own family has become a metaphor for the power relation haunting the two facets of the Norwegian society as a whole: This intimate, familiar view on a societal issue is now the platform where Mikalsen explores themes connected to identity and structural alienating, and her family has become a central, reoccurring trope in her artistic work.

Download press photo here. (Credit: Magnus Holmen)

News

This artist participated in the SHAPE platform which concluded in 2022. The current version of the project is SHAPE+. Like its predecessor, it is co-funded by the European Union.