The Bikuben Foundation studio programme
The Bikuben Foundation started its studio programme in 2014 as a way to give recent graduates of visual-arts programmes the opportunity to continue their development as artists and to establish themselves professionally. The programme offered participating artists studio space in the Bikuben Foundation building. In connection with the sale of the building, a TO GO version was created that instead brought the programme to participants’ studios. Since the programme’s inception, Christina Wilson has served as the personal consultant to all participating artists, offering them advice about their artistic practices, and what it takes of professionalism, networking and contacts, as well as interaction with the public, cultural institutions and galleries, to make them sustainable.
Starting in 2020 and until this year, the Bikuben Foundation produced artistic-practice films for studio-programme participants. The films provide an individual portrait of each participating artist in the form of a conversation with a person of the artist’s choice. Each film features the artist at work in the studio, their artistic practice and their own unique approach to art. Participating artists receive assistance making strategic contact to potential partners abroad. Read more about Artistic Practice here
THE STUDIO PROGRAMME TODAY
Today, Art Hub Copenhagen is responsible for the Studio Programme. Art Hub Copenhagen is an independent association that was established by the Bikuben Foundation to promote the development of the arts, and in particular the visual arts. Read more here
2021-2022
Marie Munk graduated from the Royal College of Art in London in 2016 and works primarily with total installation, that incorporates sculpture, movement, sound and interactive elements. Munk’s works question normative perceptions of the body at a time when digital universes, technological innovation and efficiency characterise and control our behaviour and bodies. She creates alternative realities that balance the playful and imaginative with the creepy and repulsive. Using silicone as a metaphor for the body, along with elements of science fiction and humour, Munk constructs abstract hypothetical future scenarios that question current trends in society.
2019-2020
Jules Fischer graduated from Det Kgl. Danske Kunstakademi in Copenhagen in 2017 and has studied dance and choreography at Den Danske Scenekunstskole and social practice at Portland State University. Fischer places her delegated-performance works at the junction of choreography and visual arts. She is preoccupied with body politics, queer and trans identity creation, the community as a premise and hyper-visibility contra invisibility. Fischer’s works are total-installation collages of plenty expressed through movement, gesture, sentences, music and costumes. The works suggest a fear of never being loved, never belonging; an inherent, omnipresent sense of loneliness and self-destructiveness stands alongside an anger and a need to resist. In collaboration with professional dancers and performers, Fischer has exhibited works at various artist-run galleries and institutions such as Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Skovsnogen, Overgaden and Tranen. She received a work grant from Statens Kunstfond in 2017 and 2019 and Agnete Jørgensens Billedhuggerlegat in 2017.
2018-2019
Ida Sønder Thorhauge graduated from Det Jyske Kunstakademi in 2016. Thorhauge works with painting and sculpture, where she uses several basic figures to examine universal imaginary images and the collective unconscious. Conceptually, the figures represent different character traits and moods, and together they form an index of possible compund narratives — a kind of complex emoji or extended pictograms. Thorhauge has exhibited at Den nordiske ambassade in Copenhagen, Kunsthal Aarhus and Aalborg’s Kunsthal Nord. In 2016, she co-established the artist group Piscine.
2017-2018
Nat Bloch Gregersen graduated from Det Jyske Kunstakademi in 2015 and Forfatterstudiet in Tromsø, Norway, in 2017. He works with sculpture, installation, sound and text, using materials such as liquid plastic, salt, textiles and candles to form viscous and porous installations in a three-dimensional space. His dualistic approach allows for shifts between form and material to arise: the synthetic and organic, the heavy and light, the invisible and visible. His work with transparency in particular adds metaphysical elements; the physical world is sought as the catalyst, or language, for an intangible connection between man and nature. Gregersen has exhibited at Antenna Media Gallery in Kyoto, Overgaden Institut for Samtidskunst in Copenhagen and Kunsthal Aarhus.
2016-2017
Martha Hviid graduated from the Royal College of Art in London in 2015. She works with a range of materials and media, most often object-based and installable. She takes an existential and ontological point of departure in her exploration of topics such as perception, physical sensations and the movement of mere existence. She works with everyday materials such as stearin, steel, carpeting and cement and often puts them together in an unorthodox manner using visual and methodical techniques such as noise, resonance and repetition. Hviid has exhibited at Moderna Museet in Malmö, KH7 Artspace in Aarhus, Camden Arts Centre in London, the Visual Arts Center in Austin, Texas, and Years and Overgaden Institut for Samtidskunst in Copenhagen.
2015-2016
Line Hvidbjerg attended Det Jyske Kunstakademi and Det Kgl. Danske Kunstakademi. She also studied to be a carpenter and joiner at Københavns Tekniske Skole. Her work is based on a dialectical relationship between language, space and materials and questions a typical masculine idiom and renegotiates it through appropriation, mirroring and language. The works, which often appear as physical interventions or installations in the space in which they appear, cause the recognisable to shift and new perspectives to arise. Hvidbjerg is co-founder of the queer-feminist art-bar project BarHvaViHar. As part of her artistic practice, she also runs carpentry firm DYKE & DATTER, which treats the company as form, platform and research from a feminist perspective.
2014-2015
Anne Mette Schultz – a graduate from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen
Camilla Reyman – a graduate from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen
Ana Pavlovic – a graduate from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen
and visual arts
Read more about the Bikuben Foundation’s work to create new types of opportunities for professional artists and art institutions