With his tableaus Hardy welcomes the viewer to a multitude of worlds. In his creative process he draws from a web of observations, memories and imagination, and responds to both large and small events in the world. He explores the complexity of life in an idiosyncratic and compassionate way and in doing so, aims to increase our social sensitivity.
Hardy studied Architecture at Eindhoven University of Technology and afterwards Photography at the Willem de Kooning Academy. He is nominated for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2021 (UK), and launches Vivarium in the accompanying exhibition. His first solo is planned for the end of 2021 in museum MOYA (NL). In 2019 he showed his work for the first time on an international stage during Photo Basel.
Ioanna Sakellaraki (b.1989) is a Greek visual artist and researcher. Her work investigates the relationship between collective cultural memory and fiction. Drawing emphasis on the photographic object, process and encounter, she explores the boundaries of a primitive, yet futuristic vision of places and people. She was recently awarded a Doctoral Scholarship for undertaking her PhD in Art after graduating from an MA Photography from the Royal College of Art. She is the recipient of The Royal Photographic Society Bursary Award 2018 and was named Student Photographer of the Year by Sony World Photography Awards 2020. In 2019, she was awarded with the Reminders Photography Stronghold Grant in Tokyo and the International Photography Grant Creative Prize. Nominations include: the Inge Morath Award by Magnum Foundation in USA, the Prix HSBC, the Prix Levallois and the Prix Voies Off in France. Her work has been exhibited internationally in art festivals and galleries with a recent solo show at the European Month of Photography in Berlin. Her projects have been featured in magazines such as The New Yorker and journals including The Guardian and Deutsche Welle. Her first monograph ‘The Truth is in the Soil’ is published by GOST Books.
Aline Bovard Rudaz is a Swiss photographer based in Geneva. She studied photography at the CEPV (Centre d’enseignement professionnel de Vevey). Through her artistic practice, she sees images as witnesses capable of conveying the concerns of her generation. For her, photography is a sensitive means of tackling the social, intimate and taboo issues of our society. She is particularly interested in forgotten histories, especially those relating to women's lives.
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.
Vika Eksta (1987) is an artist based in Riga, Latvia. In her long-term projects, Vika combines the documentary and fictional. Most of her work reflects upon the artist's personal experiences - be it an exploration of a fictional identity or of a Latvian rural landscape. Vika's choice of medium depends on the idea of the project. She is skilled in photography, analogue photo lab work, performance for the camera and audiovisual archive research. Vika is the winner of the ADC Young Guns, FK Portfolio and Riga Photography Biennial awards for young Baltic photographers, and has been nominated for the Purvītis Prize. Since 2014, she has participated in exhibitions in Latvia and abroad, including at the Latvian National Museum of Art (2020, 2022), kim? Contemporary Art Centre (2019), Gallery Alma (2019, 2021), ISSP Gallery (2018), Kaunas Photography Gallery (2017) and many various festivals. Her work is held in the collections of Latvian National Museum of Art, Latvian Museum of photography and private collections.
www.vikaeksta.comhttps://www.instagram.com/ekstavika/
Yu Shuk Pui Bobby (b. 1994) is a visual artist based between Hong Kong and Oslo. With a collaborative approach to her practice, her work conjures the physical, tangible and affective phenomena associated with biotechnology through combinations of video, text, installation, sculpture, and performance. She often uses speculative fiction to tackle questions of human genetic engineering, reconfiguring perceptions of gender, body and historical discourses of identity. Bobby holds a BA from Hong Kong Baptist University and an MFA from Oslo National Academy of Fine Art. Her works have been in Hong Kong, Norway, Japan, China, Iceland and the USA.
Tanja Engelberts (b. 1987) lives and works in The Hague, the Netherlands. In recent years, Engelberts has worked on several projects related to the fossil fuel industry, focusing on the ways in which energy production shapes our landscapes. In 2021, she concluded a two-year residency at Amsterdam’s Rijksakademie. She has participated in further residency programmes at The Banff Center for Arts and Creativity (CA), The Ucross Foundation (USA), IK Foundation (NL) and Örö Residence (FI). Exhibited and published internationally, Engelberts’ works are also included in the collections of De Nederlandsche Bank (NL), De Brauw (NL) and Clifford Chance (UK). She is represented by Caroline O’Breen Gallery, Amsterdam.
Exhibitions include: 'Making Strange' 2019 Grand Prix Eyes on Talent in Photography & Sustainability, opened on 6th November during Paris Photo (2019) / 'Making Strange' Hyeres International Festival of Fashion and Photography (2019) / 'Labs New Artist III' Red Hook Labs (2019) / ‘There’s Life in it Yet’ (2016), with Kieran Kilgallon / ‘The Fighting Irish’ (2016) at Drop Everything Festival on Inís Oirr Island, Galway / ‘Resonate’ (2015) at Gallery of Photography, Dublin / 'Apparitions' (2015) at NCAD, Dublin / ‘Thread’ (2012) at the Gallery of Photography, Dublin.
Karim El Maktafi (Desenzano del Garda, 1992) is an Italian Moroccan photographer based in Milan. In 2013 he graduated at the Instituto Italiano di Fotografia in Milan. In 2016, he obtained a one-year scholarship at Fabrica, Benetton's communication research center in Treviso.
During his residency period, El Maktafi made the project Hayati and, one year later, won the PHMuseum 2017 Grant - New Generation Prize. With the same project, El Maktafi has been finalist of the CAP Prize 2017 (Contemporary African Photography prize) and second prize at the Kassel Dummy Award 2018. In 2017 he won a mentorship with the American photographer Maggie Steber (VII Agency), while in 2018 he gets the Magnum Photos scholarship with Alex Majoli.
Karim works on long-term projects between Italy and Morocco exploring concepts as identity and sense of belonging through documentary and portrait photography. His work has been exhibited at La Triennale Museum in Milan, Museum in Der Kulturbrauerei in Berlin, Pavillon Populaire in Montpellier, Macro Testaccio Museum in Rome and in other photography festivals in Europe, as well has been published, among others, on The Washington Post Magazine, National Geographic USA, Internazionale, Vice, GEO.
www.karimelmaktafi.com
A certain openness to manipulation and reuse of images, inherent in the graphic design work, as well as a particular attention to project and research, rather than instinctuality alone, are characteristics that remain visible in the author's practice even after converting to photography. The awareness of images’ hybrid and ambiguous nature is in fact a constant subtext of his work, which varies from time to time between a more conceptual approach to photography and a more descriptive and documentary one, often mixing the two. Alongside his personal research, he collaborates with the collective Vaste Programme, founded with Giulia Vigna and Alessandro Tini in 2017, to experiment with post-photography, installations and new media.
Her photographs have been shown and published in different media and communication such as El Diario.es, La Marea, ABC, El País, Vice, Grupo EFE, RTVE and TVG. Her work has been exhibited in cultural institutions such as the Cultural Center of Spain in Lima, Landkreis Galerie in Germany, Museum of Memory in Argentina, La Casa Encendida, National Calcografía, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Conde Duque Cultural Center, and Matadero in Madrid, Cristina Enea Foundation in Donostia or Cidade da cultura in Santiago de Compostela.
She has also exhibited in galleries in Madrid: Galería Zero, Galería Liebre, La New Gallery and Noestudio. International galleries such as Galería Moproo in Shanghai and Galería Ruby in Buenos Aires. Her work has been selected in different competitions, as well as national scholarships and artistic residences. Standing out the Resident Culture 2020, Best Photo Essay Lifestyle of the Ottawa International Vegan Film Festival 2019, 2017 VEGAP Creation Grant, Scholarships Abroad at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) of A Coruña 2015 and finalist in Fotopres La Caixa 2015.
Scarlat’s work has been recognised and awarded in several national and international competitions, such as PHotoEspaña, the Emerging Photographer Fund (Magnum Foundation), World Nomads, Promoción del Arte at Tabacalera Cantera, Visa pour l’image, Matera European Photography, Artistas Novos, and Creación Injuve. In 2021 he received a bookmaking scholarship at Magnum Photos. This year he also has received a long-term mentorship scholarship at Magnum Photos, and he is currently working with Gregory Halpern and Alessandra Sanguinetti for this project.
Scarlat has always been interested in working with his family from Romania. After leaving in 2005 at the age of 11 and having spent 15 years away, his relationship with them has changed. In his projects, he like to insist on those tensions and conflicts that have arisen as a result of moving to Spain. He is interested in Eastern Europe, Romania, alcoholics, his mother, religion, death, the traces of communism on people's faces, gypsies, children, the cemetery, the lake, wedding dresses, unmarried women, dead girls in wedding dresses, dead horses, boys playing soccer, abandoned dogs, funerals, weddings, enchantments, women who are going to clean the graves in the cemetery, flowers, gold…
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