OSLO.- OSL contemporary will present Ane Graff and Ahmed Umar at CHART art fair 2025 at the historic Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Ane Graff investigates the interplay between the human body and its material environment, drawing from feminist new materialism, science, and eco-philosophy. Ahmed Umar is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice centres on storytelling, materiality, cultural hybridity and identity.
The duo-presentation will showcase a new body of work by both artists specifically produced for CHART, entailing intricate and ornate glass-based sculptural pieces.
Ane Graff The Flesh Age 2025
Borosilicate glass, paint, stones or crystals
40 x 25 x 25 cm each / 130 x 30 x 30 cm (including pedestal) Tripych
Unique works
“The Flesh Age is a sculptural triptych composed of vessels, stones, and quiet thresholds. Each work carries the residue of a metamorphosis already underway rituals left mid-spell. Glass branches like a nervous system, or the rootwork of something half-buried. These are not diagrams of the body, but perhaps its dreams: soft anatomies shifting states, mineral growing warm, organs dissolving into weather.
The body is no longer separate—its separation was always imagined, or conjured, and never real anyway.” - Ane Graff
Ane Graff is informed by feminist new materialisms’ ongoing re- thinking of our material reality, in which a relational and process- oriented approach to matter including the matter of living bodies— plays an integral part. Within this framework, Graff focuses on human and non-human relationships, viewing human beings as part of an expansive, material network, stretching inside and outside of our bodies. Her work traces lines of Western intellectual history and asks how ideas of human exceptionalism, Cartesian dualism and representational thinking all relate to the ecological disasters we face today, and furthermore, what seem to be their current and future implications for material bodies. Graff sees all material bodies as part of an ongoing material experiment, where new substances are being added to the mix (through industrial production and pollution), causing an entangled web of changes and promoting new bodily states. Collaborating with scientists, Graff’s sculptural works often incorporate experimental materials such as bacterial pigments, hair dye, meat glue, phytoestrogens and SSRI antidepressant medications.
Ane Graff (b. 1974, Bodø) lives and works in Oslo, Norway. She graduated from Bergen National Academy of the Arts in 2004 and currently holds a position of PhD Research Fellow at the Oslo National Academy the Arts, with her doctoral dissertation scheduled December 2022. She has been part of exhibitions such as Weather Report –Forecasting Future, Nordic Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, (curated by Piia Oksanen and Leevi Haapala, KIASMA), 2019; Art Encounters Biennial, (curated by Maria Lind & Anca Rujoiu), 2019; Soon Enough: Art in Action, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, 2018; Myths of the Marble, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, 2017; the 11th Gwangju Biennale The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do?), Gwangju, 2016; and Surround Audience, The New Museum Triennial, 2015, NY.
Recent exhibitions include: and we learn to keep the soil wet (group exhibition) at CARA, New York City (2023), Ane Graff: The Wound in Its Entanglements at Kunstinstituut Melly, Netherlands (2022). Liquid Life at Kistefos (2021) (curated by Martha Kirszenbaum), the Rhizome/ New Museum/ Stavanger Kunsthall collaboration 7x7 (2021); 2021 Liverpool Biennale (curated by Manuela Moscoso).
Ahmed Umar Glowing Phalanges 2025
Glass, wood, mixed media, acrylic resin Various dimensions
Series of fifteen Unique works
“Glowing Phalanges explores identity, faith, and resistance through handcrafted amulets inspired by my upbringing in Mecca, between Sufi traditions and Wahhabi ideologies. Made from exotified materials brought to Norway, the works reclaim forbidden practices and honor queerness, ancestry, and spiritual agency. Guided by Sufi prayer beads numerology (15, 33, 99, and 1000), I’m making 15 new sculptures for CHART, using a mix of wood and, for the first time, glass.” - Ahmed Umar
Ahmed Umar (b.1988, Sudan) is a cross-disciplinary artist living and working in Oslo. He received his MFA degree in medium and material- based art from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2016. Through his work, Umar has also been an important front figure for queer persons with Muslim backgrounds in Norway and Sudan.
His artistic practice highlights questions regarding identity, religion, and cultural values through different modes of artistic expression. He uses personal experiences as tools to convey narratives not only about suppression and alienation, but also about liberation and owning one’s own history.
In 2023, Umar presented solo exhibitions at Kunstnernes Hus and Bergen Kunsthall in Norway. He was also nominated for the Lorck Schive Kunstpris at Trondheim Kunstmuseum. In 2024, Umar participated in the Venice Biennale and was the recipient of the Baloise Art Prize in the Statements sector at Art Basel. He presented his video work ‘Truth Bears No Scandal’ at the Toronto Biennial of Art. In 2025, he presented his solo exhibition at Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico, and is currently part of a group exhibition at Borås Konstmuseum, Sweden. In November 2025, Umar is scheduled for a solo exhibition at Kunstmusem Stuggart, Germany.
Umar is part of several collections including The National Museum of Norway, KODE, Kistefos, and Museum MMK Für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt.
