Ajla R. Steinvåg (Class of Outcasts) is a visual artist born in Vadsø, Northern Norway (1975), currently living in Helmond, an industrial city in the south of the Netherlands, with a studio at Heuvelpark in Dongen, a creative hub in the same region. Her practice operates at the intersection of art and medicine, treating the body as a site of material reconstruction.

Steinvåg’s methodology mirrors that of a clinical researcher. Trained in Specialized Art Ceramics at the Academy of Fine Art and Design in Bergen and Fine Arts at the Dutch Art Institute in Enschede, she further developed her technical framework through postgraduate programs in Ceramics and CAD-CAM at Sundaymorning@EKWC and the Body as Site residency at the Banff Center. Crucially, she has specialized in the medical field as a casualty special make-up artist and actor, a background that informs her unique perspective on anatomy, pathology, and surgery.

For Steinvåg, these medical disciplines are not merely sources of aesthetic imagery; the ideas, processes, and techniques the body undergoes are central to her work. Operating on the cutting edge of art and medicine, she extends reality to expose the material processes of identity and physical integrity as defined by medical intervention. Rather than perpetuating the illusion that illness can be avoided, she confronts the viewer with the beauty of imperfection, susceptibility, vulnerability, and mortality as we advance alongside medical technology.

Her work has been supported by research and work grants from the Mondriaan Fund and the Brabant Culture Fund in the Netherlands.