Short biographies of the artists

Kaiwan Mehta (*1975 in Mumbai/India) studied architecture, English literature, and Indian aesthetics at the University of Mumbai. He also completed a postgraduate diploma in cultural studies at the Center for the Study of Culture and Society in Bangalore/India. Since 1999 Mehta teaches as senior lecturer and examiner at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and was a lecturer at several universities, including the South Asian Center in Bangalore of Long Island University, USA and at the Interior Design Deparment of the SNDT Women’s University in Mumbai. Kaiwan Mehta is a Solitude fellow in 2008/2010.

***
Mike Osborne (*1978 in Texas/USA) works as a photographer and a lecturer in photography at the University of Texas at Austin and St. Edwards University. His recent work has been supported by the Fulbright Association, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, among others. Mike Osborne was a Solitude fellow in 2008/2009.

***
Ines Birkhan (*1974 in Vienna/Austria) studied sculpture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and dance and choreography at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam/Netherlands. She works as a dancer and choreographer and as a writer. Ines Birkhan has been a Solitude fellow since October 2009 and works together with the video artist and musician Bertram Dhellemmes on the project »Angel Meat«.
Bertram Dhellemmes studied visual arts and film in Lille and Paris and completed a postgraduate course in performance art and new media at the Studio National des Arts Contemporain du Fresnoy. Since then, he has been primarily focused on dance and music. In 2003, he founded the dance company Real Dance Super Sentai, which he co-directs together with Ines Birkhan.

***
Alena Williams (*1977 in Denver, CO/USA) is an art historian and curator who lives in Berlin. She is currently completing her dissertation »Movement in Vision: Cinema, Aesthetics, and Modern German Culture, 1915–1930« at Columbia University in New York, and is a fellow in the research group Media of History – History of Media at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Her upcoming traveling exhibition »Nancy Holt: Sightlines« will open at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Gallery at Columbia University in fall 2010; the first retrospective publication on the artist including contributions from Pamela M. Lee, Lucy Lippard, James Meyer, Matthew Coolidge, and Ines Schaber is forthcoming with University of California Press. Alena Williams was a fellow in the art, science & business program at Akademie Schloss Solitude in 2008.