Michala Paludan ^(DK)

Michala Paludan (b. 1983) is a Danish artist living and working in Copenhagen. Paludan is a fellow of the Whitney Independent Study Program (2012) and received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts (2011). She studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 2005 to 2009. During the past decade, Paludan has framed how power is produced and negotiated across networks and movements, through media such as video, photography and installation. Paludan has exhibited widely in Scandinavia and abroad. Recent exhibitions include: I am Your Body: Automation at Kunsthal Aarhus, Aarhus, Open Shut Them at C.C.C. Gallery, Copenhagen and Our Work at Lunds Konsthall, Lund.

In 2024, Michala Paludan is a part of AHC’s program Micro Institute, an alternative format for practice-based research with an emphasis on process, collaboration, and the development of method. Please read more below.

MICRO INSTITUTE
Michala Paludan will explore the material implications of automation and AI, focusing on how these technologies shape discourse and affect social reproduction, particularly in relation to gendered labour in the domestic sphere. Through fieldwork and on-site research in robotised industries in Southeast Asia and Denmark, she will examine how automation disrupts and reorganises social relations and interactions between humans and non-human agents and media. By engaging senses beyond sight, such as touch, her project will investigate the distribution of behaviour and embodiment between humans and machines, subjects and objects, and representations and their referents. 

The outcome of her Micro Institute will include a solo exhibition featuring new works at Aarhus Kunsthal in autumn 2024 and the publication of an artist book by Disko Bay. Additionally, Michala will convene discursive events with scholars and practice-based thinkers as part of the research process. She also intends to use her Micro Institute to deepen her methodological reflection, enhance her theoretical insight, and compile a bibliography to gain an overview of the current state of research in fields such as gender studies, critique of technology, and anthropology.

This profile is last updated on 26 September 2024.