ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE

Eliyah Mesayer’s artistic practice balances on the threshold between reality and fiction. Across installation, performance, and poetry—and using conceptual and scenographic approches—she materializes and intertwines historical facts with poetic fiction in dreamy and utopian manifestations.

Her ongoing project Illiyeen is based on a Bedouin expression that refers to a celestial register where the deeds of the righteous are recorded and preserved. In Mesayer’s practice, Illiyeen is transformed into an allegorical “state of nowhere and nation of everywhere”—a place beyond geographic and national boundaries. From this point, she unfolds a fictional and poetic world-building that examines how power is formed, distributed, and represented.

For TOASTER, Mesayer presents two performances in which guardians of Illiyeen inscribe the state’s past and future statutes. In the first performance, two characters carry out the writing, while in the second, the entire audience becomes part of the process—experiencing the creation of a state where poetry holds the highest authority and participating in the act of recording its poetics.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Eliyah Mesayer (DK) graduated from the Jutland Academy of Fine Arts, Aarhus, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, and Bergen Academy of Art and Design. She has previously exhibited at Heartland Festival, Rå Hal in Aarhus, MMCA in Seoul, and the Gwangju Biennale. Her solo exhibition The Speaker’s Room will open at Den Frie in Oslo in January 2026. Mesayer lives and works in Copenhagen. 

TOASTER PERFORMANCE BIENNALE

In April 2026, Toaster presents Denmark’s first international performance biennale, taking place across Den Frie and Husets Teater.

The biennale offers a current portrait of the performance field within both visual art and performing arts – and the many intersections between them – which are rapidly evolving nationally as well as internationally. The focus is state of the art: taking the temperature of the field right now.

Experience more than 20 performances, including 10 entirely new works created specifically for the biennial. The artists range from established performance practitioners to emerging talents – sometimes within the same work.

The programme encompasses works rooted in dance, text, costume, sound, light, music, and space. Performance is here and now – it is the time we live in, and the time we choose to spend together.