Michael Richardt (b. 1980 Denmark) is a performance artist who specialises in long durational and time-based performance often involving audience participation.His performances have lasted from a split second to thirteen consecutive days. His practice is anchored in the physical body in relation to the movements of the planet's geophysical forces, such as torsion, propulsion, wave interference and hypersurface structures. He references these in installation, film, oil painting, sculpture, artist books, writing, photography and archival research. He aims to create an alchemical transformation,. He is a matriarchal thinker searching for a utopic nonviolent language, which transcends the divine feminine across generational and temporal landscapes. Since 2012 he has worked with his heritage, making performances and films about his Danish mother and his father, who is from Niger. In 2017 the documentary My Mother is Pink premiered at the CPH:DOX festival and in 2019 it won the Outstanding Excellence Award in Rajasthan, in India. He has worked for Marina Abramovich at Henie Onstad in Oslo and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, and is currently showing at Nikolaj Kunsthal in Copenhagen.
Emilie Dalum (b. 1989 Denmark) is an artist and art curator, whose work focuses on photography and visual art. Seeing that creative potential exists everywhere around us, Emilie’s work strives to unravel the unseen aspects of history and humankind; a vulnerability is disclosed – a kind that relates to that of the magical and the mystical. In order to allow a free mind to think and perceive, her projects reflect upon the act of showing rather than telling. Thus, Emilie’s sensitive eye for cultural and social inclusion attempts to bridge the connections and interactions between art, people and places – across time and space. In a world controlled by rationality and ideologies, she is directed towards comprehending and persistently developing her visual language with relevance for the given individual and environment.
Her photographic self portrait, Emilie, was exhibited at Reykjavík Museum of Photography in 2018. Since 2017, Emilie has served as the art curator and project manager of the annual exhibition The Factory, situated in the old herring factory in Djúpavík and The Tub / Balinn in Þingeyri, Iceland. The Factory has showcased the work of almost 100 artists and strengthens the connection between art, cultural history, family business and tourism.This makes the exhibition unique on the Icelandic cultural scene and highlights the importance of the western region of Iceland. This annual project has been made possible with generous financial support from Sparisjóður Strandamanna, Brothættar byggðir, Náttúruverndarsjóður, Pálma Jónssonar and Uppbyggingarsjóður Vestfjarða. Emilie is currently collaborating with a French publishing house on the photobook Michael, entailing her photographic portrayal of Michael Richardt. The book includes poetry from both of them.
Emilie and Michael met in 2010, studying dance and circus at Performers House in Silkeborg, Denmark. Independently from each other, they both moved to Reykjavik in 2012, Emilie studying European Ethnology and Michael writing for The Glass Dress project. Emilie stayed on, while Michael moved to Copenhagen. In 2014 their paths crossed again, when Emilie studied at Fatamorgana The Danish School of Art Photography, and started the series Michael. Moving forward to 2020, both Emilie and Michael were accepted to The Iceland University of the Arts, Emilie in MA in Curatorial Practice and Michael in the MFA in Performing Arts. Their friendship has grown and flourished as they have developed and changed artistically. They have journeyed through performance, photography, curation and academia. Their roles and elements are ever changing, they blend together and change, and create a new hybridity and intimacy. This collaboration states a new trust between them - not defining only observing. Emilie is due to give birth to her second daughter on April 9th. Their next artistic collaboration will be the final weeks of her pregnancy which will be documented by Michael. https://hugarflug.lhi.is/Emilie-Michael