Spring 2025 Audain Visual Artist in Residence: Sandy Kaltenborn

Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts is pleased to welcome Sandy Kaltenborn as the Spring 2025 Audain Visual Artist in Residence.

During his time in Vancouver, Kaltenborn will give a public presentation on his work, meet with SCA graduate students, and engage with the wider community. He will also join SCA Professor Sabine Bitter’s third-year visual art class and contribute to the discussions, workshops, and exploration of the role that art and design can play as forms of critical engagement in social and political contexts. Their work together will shape the 2025 BFA Project exhibition.

Events
Artist talk: Tuesday, March 25, 6pm
Audain Gallery, 149 West Hastings St, Vancouver

BFA Project 2025: The City as Many: March 20–April 5, 2025
Opening reception: Wednesday, March 19, 6–9pm
Audain Gallery, 149 West Hastings St, Vancouver

Biography
Sandy Kaltenborn is a Berlin-based communication designer and artist with a strong emphasis on communication as a social and political practice. Born in Essen, Germany, and raised in Saudi Arabia and Oman, he studied communication design at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee under Alex Jordan (Grapus collective). Moving fluidly between disciplines, and often collaborating with social and political movements, his practice is less about fixed outcomes and more about negotiation, dialogue, and transformation through the means of design and art. In the early 2000s, he co-founded image-shift, a Berlin-based studio working at the intersection of design, cultural production, art, social movements, and urban struggles. He is also one of the co-founders of the well-known tenant initiative Kotti & Co and has been involved in many anti-racist initiatives, such as Kanak Attak and Kein Mensch ist illegal. image-shift.net.

About AVAIR
The Audain Visual Artist in Residence (AVAIR) program brings artists and practitioners to Vancouver who have contributed significantly to the field of contemporary art and whose work resonates with local and international visual art discourses. Past residences have included Oscar Tuazon, Iman Issa, Ming Wong, Kota Ezawa, Irena Haiduk, Jackson Polys, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Heba Y. Amin, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Jeremy Deller, Sanja Iveković, Charles Gaines, Samson Young, Alejandro Cesarco, Raven Chacon, Sarah Pierce, Walid Raad, Jalal Toufic, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hito Steyerl, and many others. The visiting artists interact with the students and faculty of the School for the Contemporary Arts as well as the broader visual arts and cultural communities. In keeping with the experimental nature of the School for the Contemporary Arts the terms of engagement are open and change from artist to artist. The cornerstone of the residency is the sharing of artistic research.

The AVAIR program is generously funded by the Audain Foundation Endowment Fund.