Jan Durina is a Slovak interdisciplinary artist who utilizes a diversity of medium to develop personas and grow the complex narratives they exist in. Through performance, photography, and sound Durina unfolds the nuance of each narrative, grappling with themes of loneliness, loss, the boundaries between nature and the body, and the distortions of the human mind as experienced within an ever developing gender and identity. Through this process Durina produces art works in the form of music, performance, lm, and photography, seamlessly and con dently moving between exhibitionary to performance contexts.http://jandurina.com/projects/recent-works/cute-tragic/
In her works she often focuses on issues connected with migration or its destiny. She is mostly interested in the problematic of constructing identity and how people define themselves and the land of their origins. Recently she is involved in collective photographic research about polish migration to South America. It happens that she gets out of the material world and enters other dimensions of perceiving the world, exploring the paranormal events and believes not connected with any religious system. Finds collective creation as the best way for making photography as permanent process of putting individual thoughts in doubts.
She was born in 1990 by the Polish seaside in Gdańsk. Graduated in Photography on Academy of Arts in Poznań. She is also part of Ostrøv publishing collective.
Prins de Vos (1991, Raamsdonk) is a Dutch photographer living in Amsterdam. In 2013, Prins graduated with a Bachelor Design from the Academy of Popculture (Leeuwarden). Their work touches on themes such as intimacy, sexuality and gender. Prins' first photo book Enclose (2013) was launched in photography museum Foam, and included a poetic introduction, written by Dutch author Arthur Japin. In 2022, Prins published their second photo book BOYS DO CRY, about Levi, who is an artist, poet and trans man.
Mateusz Kowalik is a documentary photographer based in Warsaw, Poland. In his work he explores the issues of contemporary society. He studies at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava, Czech Republic. He is a graduate of the Sputnik Photos Mentoring Program and the PARALLEL European Photo Based Platform. He showed his works, among others at festivals in Wrocław, Łódź, Kraków, Hanover, Zagreb and Los Angeles, as well as at the Robert Capa Photography Center in Budapest.
www.mateusz-kowalik.com
In Maria Baoli’s series, linearity is constantly broken up. The stories she tells are diffracted; space and time overlap; images are shot through with cracks and scratches like broken mirrors. Although it is clear that the photographer is attached to human situations, to stories and environments charged with life and memories, these devices make us focus on the stylistic elements of the images and stimulate an open and complex interpretation of them. This is particularly true for one of her most recent projects, Chez moi loin de chez moi [At Home Far Away From Home], which explores the Maison Africaine in Brussels, a community home for students.
Maria Baoli’s images are balanced between the depth of their intention (archive, memory, time, love, dreams, etc.) and the surface. This plays a primordial role and in so doing forms a highly personal (and unique) response from the artist to the contemporary use of the snapshot.
Through an uninhibited use of flash, which flattens shadows and adds drama to the composition even in the most mundane and stripped-down environments; through her preference for the close-up or dense landscapes that block the horizon; through the frontality of her perspective; through her use of collage, which disrupts the documentary by introducing a fascinating graphic dimension, Maria Baoli relies on the figures of discontinuity that she turns into loyal servants of reality.
Text by Anne-Françoise Lesuisse
Nina Medioni (b. 1991) lives and works in Marseille. In 2015, After graduating with an MA in Literature, she enrolled at the National School of Photography in Arles. Here, she developed an interest in documentary photography; in the image as a tool to meet the ‘other’. In 2019, Medioni spent several months with her Jewish Orthodox family in Tel Aviv, marking the start of her series, The Veil. The project has since been exhibited in both France and Israel. In 2022, she began the Un été au Prépaou series, which charts her encounter with a working-class neighbourhood in the city of Istres. She is currently editing her first film, Le Chalet, which studies the complexities of a neighbourhood surrounding her uncle's house – a seemingly misplaced cottage in the Parisian cityscape.
website: nina-medioni.com
Instagram: @ninamedioni
Pauline Beugnies was born in Charleroi in 1982. She works on long-term personal photography projects. Recently, she start writing and directing films. She also works as a photojournalist for the press. She lived in Cairo for five years and studied Arabic there.
Pauline is focusing on the Arab and the Islamic world, trying to build bridges and to go beyond stereotypes. Her first book Génération Tahrir was published by Le Bec éditions in January 2016. She was the second recipient of the Camille Lepage award in Perpignan Visa pour l’Image festival in 2016.
Her latest project, "Behind The Sun", mixing photos, videos and documents was exhibited at BPS22 in 2018. Recently, she start writing and directing films. Her first documentary film "Lessa Aichin"(Still Alive) was selected at FIFF, Dok Leipzig and nominated at Magrittes du Cinema in 2018.
www.paulinebeugnies.com
He grew up in a small post industrial town of Belgium where his grandparents as well as many other south Italian families emigrated to work in the coal mines.
He received his first camera from his father at 9 years old while visiting his family in Cameroon. From there, he starts documenting life around him, finding inspiration in the richness and texture of the communities that made him.
He wishes for his photography to be a modest look at his own experience of life.
Louiza Vradi is a visual artist working with photography, video, new media and textile. She holds a BFA and MFA in visual arts, new media, sculpture, and art education from the Athens School of Fine Arts. Her work explores social documentary practices, addressing themes such as personal and collective memories, human movement, gender issues, intergenerational trauma, and our relationship with the land. She often examines the impact of sociopolitical contexts on individuals and rituals in contemporary society. In addition to her artistic practice, Louiza is an art educator trained in art therapy, working with individuals with mental and psycho-social disabilities, as well as those recovering from addiction. Since 2020, she has been a freelance visual journalist for Reuters, completing a Hostile Environment and First Aid Training (HEFAT) in 2023. Louiza is a member of Women Photograph and Greek Documentary Association. She was named one of 30 Under 30 Women Photographers for 2020 by Artpil and she has been awarded with the VII Academy Scholarship. Her work can be found in international media such as The Economist, The New York Times, Vogue, Le Monde, Reuters, The Guardian, Monocle, Penguin Books, BBC, Dazed, Paris Fashion Week, etc. She has showcased her artworks in museums and galleries such as The Benaki Museum, Onassis Stegi and The Breeder gallery, among others. In 2023 she was awarded by the Greek Documentary Association for her documentary film, later supported by the Greek Film Center. She is one of the Futures Photography talents selected by VOID for 2024 and an Onassis Air Fellow. She is a recipient of the Global Investigative Journalism Network and iMEdD Fellowship. She currently lives and works in Athens.
Her interest is focused on the assembled image and its classification. Thereby she works with collage techniques and illustration to explore the process between individual and collective viewpoints. The work reflects on visuals sourced online from social media accounts or search engine results. The artist collects the images based on commonality in depiction and repeating patterns in gesture and choice of surrounding. Through digital techniques and physical interventions, single fragments get extracted and multiplied into an overall picture. Thereby each element in the picture contains a collection of different moments in time.
Alina Maria Frieske was also nominated for Futures by Hyères Festival.
Laura C. Vela’s work focuses on the everyday, the infinitely small, and the relationship human beings share with their surroundings. She perceives photography as a way of placing herself in the world and a means of communicating with others.
She published her first book, 'Vorhandenheit', in 2014, which was reissued in 2020. In 2016 she collaborated on 'Subculturcide', a book about Madrid during the 2010s. She was a selected artist at Plat(t)form 2018 (Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland) and in May 2019 she published her first photo book, 'Como la casa mía', with the publishing house Dalpine, Shortlisted for PhotoEspaña Best Book of the Year Award 2020. In July 2020 she edited and published 'Las simples cosas', a collective photo book. In 2022, she published 'Siempre van solos, los bichos', a transmedia project (book and web format). Since november 2020, she directed the book collection 'Esto es un cuerpo'.
Laura is a Superior Technician of Plastic Arts and Design in Photography (Arte 10 School, Madrid). Laura graduated in Philosophy (Universidad Complutense, Madrid) and she won the BlankPaper scholarship to study a Master’s in Development of Artistic Projects. She also has a Diploma in Chinese Studies (International Institute of International Studies, UCM, Madrid).
In 2020 she won the photography scholarship of the Association of Hungarian Photographers. In the same year she was among the winners of Carte Blanche Students, a scholarship founded by Paris Photo, the world's greatest photo art fair. The works of the four winners were exhibited at the Parisian Gare du Nord. Her diploma series, entitled "Three Colours I Know in This World," was chosen for the 10 New Talent 2020 programme by the curators of BredaPhoto Festival and was exhibited in The Netherlands.
Her work is often applauded by the foreign press. Also her photos are part of the Blurring the Lines 2020 issue. From 2020 she is represented by TOBE Gallery, Budapest.
Ebbesen works with reflections to create surreal effects in her work: "In my work, I aim to play with the sense of reality that we relate to the photograph by distorting the objects and space within the picture frame. With these effects, I aim to surprise and confuse and leave one with the question of what is real." Conceptually her works often deal with identity and the subconscious self affected by and interrelated with the surrounding world.
Bundurakis’ work focuses on how it feels to be a living organism in this era that lies between the primal, the modern & the post natural-world. Images collide and divide according to the situation. Drawings, video and haikus are incorporated. Extracting fragments of the bodies that surround her and her own, she layers the pure with the artificial and the thirst for something truly crisp with loss and boredom, aiming to create cosmic and organic sensations.
In her project Eating Magma, Elena focuses on 4 ‘F’s: her Flesh, her Food, Fauna, and Flora. Creating an interconnecting universe, by combining these 4 ‘F’s, whose roles and existence, constantly shift and mutate into each other, she attempts to find an emotional and ethical position within a society ruled by control systems.
www.freethecelery.com
It’s been seven years since I left Poland, my native country. The departure created the need to question my homeland. It swings constantly back in my mind and in my works. What I try to understand is why Poland resonates in me. Why do I constantly look for it abroad whereas all I wanted was to escape from it? Finally, how can I free myself from it? Answers never come; only more questions appear. Somewhere between past and present stories, speculations; an opportunity for me to wander through different identities.
My practice mixes photography, physical presence, text, installation and sound. Our My work in progress, Dom* [EN house, home], lies between performance and theatre play, not suiting plainly to either of them. It engages two performers and me, a setting that is being constructed during the show and numerous stories that come along with it. What I explore is the visual mean in which a story, a memory, or an image is transmitted throughout a performative act.
* Dom is written by Wiktoria Synak, directed by Wiktoria Synak and Erwan Augoyard and performed by Wiktoria Synak, Anouk Boyer-Mazal and Olga Wyszkowska.