Previous Artists in Residence

Cheikh Ndiaye

contemporary painter and artist

Curriculum Vitae

Cheikh Ndiaye, born 1970 in Dakar, is a contemporary painter and artist. He graduated from the National School of fine Arts in Dakar in 1998. Furthermore he obtained a Diplôme National Supérieur d'Expression Plastique from the School of Fine Arts in Lyon, France, in 2008. He has participated in numerous exhibitions in Europe (e.g. at the Venetian Biennale in 2015), Africa and the United States. His works were honoured with the Natulis Art Temporary prize in Berlin, Germany, in 2012, the Linossier prize in France in 2008, and the Marin Prize for Painting in Paris in 2013.

Hamid Sulaiman

Syrian artist and comic author

Curriculum Vitae

Hamid Sulaiman is a Syrian artist. He lives and works in Germany (Berlin) as well as in France (Paris). In 2005, he began his studying Art and Architecture at the University of Damascus (Syria) and completed his degree in 2010. From October 2016 to June 2017 Hamid Sulaiman was active as Artist in Residence at the Käte Hamburger Center "Law as Culture". During his time as Artist in Residence at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities “Law as Culture”, Hamid Sulaiman was working on his 'graphic novel', "82, before freedom hospital". This is the artist’s second ‘graphic novel’, which follows his first well-received piece "Freedom Hospital".

Tim Shaw

Sculptor

Curriculum Vitae

Tim Shaw, born 1964 in Belfast, is a sculptor and contemporary visual artist. He studied first at Manchester Polytechnic and then at Falmouth School of Art, where he received a first class BA (Hons) Fine Art degree. He has had a number of significant solo shows throughout the UK, Ireland and internationally. Most recently the major public solo exhibition “Black Smoke Rising”, toured to mac Birmingham and Aberystwyth Arts Centre. During 2014, his work featured in “Reflections of War” at Flowers Gallery in London, and “Back from the Front presents: Shock and Awe – Contemporary Artists at War and Peace” at the Royal West of England Academy. Tim Shaw has undertaken a number of public commissions including “The Rites of Dionysos” for the Eden Project, “The Minotaur” for The Royal Opera House and “The Drummer” in Truro City Centre. A more political side to his work became evident in a number of sculptures responding to issues such as terrorism and the war in Iraq such as “Tank on Fire”, awarded the selectors’ choice Threadneedle prize in 2008, and the installation “Casting a Dark Democracy”. Tim Shaw has been supported by the Kappatos Gallery in Athens, The Kenneth Armitage Foundation, The British School of Athens and The Delfina Studio Trust through residencies in Greece and Spain, and a Fellowship in London. In 2013, he was elected to the Royal Academy and was elected a Fellow of The Royal British Society of Sculptors and a Fellow of Falmouth University. From April 2015 to March 2016, Tim Shaw was active as Artist in Residence at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities “Law as Culture” where he received the Georg Simmel Artist Stipend for his work on the topic “The Birth of Breakdown Clown”.

Giles Walker

Roboticist/Sculptor

Curriculum vitae

British artist Giles Walker has been working with robots for the last 20 years. As a member of the guerilla-art group “The Mutoid Waste Company”, he started building kinetic sculptures and robots from materials found in various scrap yards around Europe. He has exhibited his work around the world, touring in Europe, Japan, Australia, Russia and the United States. His widely-noticed project “Peepshow”, in which two cyborg pole dancers draw a link between surveillance systems and voyeurism, was featured at the UK’s first Kinetica Art Fair in 2009 and was included in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s exhibition “Decode – Digital Design Sensations” which presented a selection of the foremost contemporary artists working in the field of digital and interactive design. His remarkable “The Last Supper”, a fully animated sculpture that took one year to complete and consists of thirteen interacting mechanical figures, was exhibited in London and Los Angeles in 2012. It continues its tour through Europe and the United Kingdom with a six month stint due in 2017 at the Science Museum in London. Giles Walker has since exhibited three more large installations in London supported by the Black Rat Gallery. All have involved large scale animatronics. He is currently working on new works for a solo exhibition in London in 2016. From November 2015 to March 2016, he was active as Artist in Residence at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities “Law as Culture”.

Stefan Stößel

Painter and graphic designer, Leipzig

Curriculum Vitae

Stefan Stößel was born in Bad Salzungen (Thuringia) in 1970. He studied at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (HGB) Leipzig, majoring in painting/graphic design under Prof. Arno Rink and is therefore associated with the Leipzig School. In 1998, he was a founding member of the Kunststoff e.V./Kunstraum B2 in Leipzig. Upon receiving his diploma in 1998, he finished his master class studies under Prof. Astrid Klein at HGB Leipzig in 2003. In 2000, he stayed on a stipend at Künstlerhaus Lucas, Ahrenshoop, as well as in Columbus, Ohio. From 2005 to 2008, he worked as assistant to Prof. Neo Rauch at HGB Leipzig. Stefan Stößel lives and works as an independent artist in Leipzig. From September 2014 to February 2015, he was Artist in Residence and holder of the Georg-Simmel-Artist Stipend at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities "Law as Culture".

Ali Samadi Ahadi

Director and screenwriter, Cologne

Curriculum Vitae

Ali Samadi Ahadi is a prize-winning director and screenwriter. Born in Tabriz, Iran, he fled to Germany due to the First Gulf War at age 13. Upon graduating from high school in 1992, he studied social sciences, design for electronic media and visual communication in Hannover and Kassel. He has been working as a freelance director and screenwriter for over 10 years.
In 2006, he received the German Film Award in the category "best documentary" for his documentary "Lost Children", produced together with Oliver Stoltz, about the fate of child soldiers in Uganda. In 2009, he was awarded the German film critics' prize in the category "Best debut feature film", for his comedy "Salami Aleikum", for which he was also awarded the 2012 CIVIS prize. He received the 2011 Grimme-prize for Information & Culture for his documentary "Iran: Elections 2009". A longer version of this documentary, titled "The Green Wave", was brought to cinemas, and was entered into the Sundance Film Festival. It received numerous further awards at international film festivals in Prague, The Hague, Geneva and Washington.
Ali Samadi Ahadi was Artist in Residence at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities "Law as Culture" from October 2011 till November 2012, during which time he worked on the movie "45 Minutes to Ramallah", which was selected as an official contribution to the Festival des Films du Monde de Montréal "Focus on World Cinema" as well as to the International Human Rights Film Festival in Nuremberg. It further ran as opening feature at the International Film Festival Osnabrück and won the jury and audience prize at the Biberach Film Festival as well as the film and media art prize by the Academy of Arts Berlin.
From February until April 2014, Ali Samadi Ahadi continued his fellowship at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities "Law as Culture" as Artist in Residence and received the Center's first "Georg Simmel Artist Stipend" ("Georg Simmel Künstlerstipendium") to support his project "Die Ministerin. Konzept-, Buch- und Stilentwicklung für einen Spielfilm", which traces and narrates the development of women's rights in recent Iranian history.

Alexander Polzin

Sculptor, Berlin

Curriculum Vitae

Alexander Polzin, Born in Berlin in 1973, was trained as a stonemason and sculptor and has been working as a freelance sculptor, painter, graphic designer, and stage designer since 1991. Polzin has had stays as artist in residence in Herzliya (Israel), at the ETH Zurich (Switzerland) and Villa Montalvo California (USA). His works have been presented at the Getty Center Los Angeles, as well as recognized through numerous individual exhibitions in Israel, Hungary, Romania, France, Switzerland, Italy, the USA (San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York). Furthermore, Alexander Polzin was active as a stage designer, inter alia, at the Staatsoper Berlin, the Staatsschauspil Schwerin, Schauspiel Frankfurt, Deutsches Theater Berlin and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Dusseldorf. He further was visiting professor at the ETH Zurich and the University of California in Santa Cruz (USA). Alexander Polzin focuses his artistic work on the sculpture in public space. Representative works are “The fallen Angel” (“Der gefallene Engel”) in front of the Kollegium Helveticum Zurich, the Giardano Bruno Memorial at the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin and “The Couple” (“Das Paar”) at the Opéra National de Paris.

His project at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities "Law as Culture" is particularly inspired by Caravaggio’s “David and Goliath”.