Graduated from the Department of Architecture of the State Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture (2010) in Dnipro (Ukraine) and from the Faculty of Media Arts of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (Poland). She was a participant of the Pla(t)form at the Fotomuseum in Winterthur, Switzerland (2018) and nominated for the Pinchuk Art Center Prize for Young Artists in Ukraine (2018) with her “Daring & Youth project”, recipient of the Solidarity Grant of Krytyka Polityczna (2020) as part of curatorial trio ZA*grupa and is one of the recipients of the Scholarship Program of Warsaw City in 2021.
The DUNA group is an open collective of artists (Lenka Bakes, Ladislav Kyllar, František Svatoš) focusing on themes of the future topics such as ecology and technology. Adaptus is a speculative project in which we explore the borders of humanity and complexity of fragile relationship network between various entities.
DUNA has presented in a number of solo exhibitions, presented the first volume of the Adaptus series in 2019 as part of the 4+4 Days in Motion festival in Prague, and has continued to develop the series through the NoD exhibition in Prague and online platforms. The Duna group was included by the French publication NONFICTION 02 on Nature, among a selection of artists born after 1980 setting the trends of the future, with recent works presented by Duna in the exhibition HOLY MATTER at Below Grand in NYC and in the exhibition Baitball at Polignano a Mare Italy.
dunagroup.tumblr.com
After finishing his studies as an interior architect, he was eager to learn to work the camera. In an auto-didactic way, he developed his own unique vision on fashion photography and later on managed to fuse his moroccan roots, tradition and culture with the western world he grew up with. The last years his Moroccan DNA is flowing more and more through his veins and his works. The urge to show this rich moroccan heritage through an artistic eye is present in everything he portraits and the inspiration he gets from his motherland is endless.
https://mousmous.com/
Her work retraces her personal family history drawing on her Togolaise heritage, and the idea of origins. The theme of family is explored through self-portraits in which she plays her mother and father, narrating their experience of migration from Togo to Italy. Her images are partially informed by the West African studio portrait tradition.
Maxim is a co-founder of SHKLO – online platform about Belarusian photography and visual arts. From 2020 he is a member of Inland - international cooperative of 13 photographers.
Maxim’s work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions including shows at the Latvian Museum of Photography (2020, Riga), Kasarna Karlin (2018, Prague) and CECH (2017, Minsk). He was published in Wall Street Journal, Stern Crime, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Courrier International, Meduza, The Telegraph, Le Monde Diplomatique among others.
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Main topics in her practice are: life in province, religion, connections between mythology and identity, her private relations with the world and her own country, with life and death. Her working method — continuous travels to small towns. She looks for something unique — people, communities, as well as place sand objects they produce. Elena says that provincial towns can be compared to separated islands, which are far enough from the mainland for evolution to goin a very unique way. She collects peculiarities of local cultures, since is sure they are on the edge of extinction, caused by globalization as well as just poverty.
Her project “Grandmothers on the Edge of Heaven” is a private family story, but also a reflection on the gap between generations. Which is multiplied in her case by the gap between two countries and two political systems: Soviet Union and modern Ukraine.
In 2015 she graduated in Cultural Studies from the Higher School of Economics (Moscow) and in 2019 she completed the course Experiences of Contemporary Photography at Docdocdoc School of Contemporary Photography (St. Petersburg). Exhibitions include: In the N apartment, all tricks are taken seriously, ZGA Gallery, St. Petersburg (2019); MoS Photo Prize, Art of Omsk City Museum (2019); Young Artists That Oksana Budulak and Sanya Zakirov Liked This Winter, Ploshchad Mira Museum Center, Krasnoyarsk (2020); and Young Photographers of Russia 2020, Innovative Cultural Center, Kaluga; Exhibition Hall, Tula (2020), Assuming the Distance: Speculations, Fakes and Predictions in the Age of the Coronacene (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow). She is a winner of The Calvert Journal Makers of Siberia Special Jury Prize (2019), the New East Photo Prize (2020), and the competition Krakow Show OFF at Photography Month in Krakow (2021). She lives and works in Moscow.
In addition to her art and research, she works on commission for architects and public institutions. She is regularly published in architectural magazines (including Casabella, Domus, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui, Le Moniteur). She gives tertiary lectures (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Florida International University, Polytechnic University of Milan, University of Genoa, Italian Institute of Culture - Addis Ababa) and leads workshops at a university level.
Her projects have been exhibited internationally, in art galleries and public institutions, such as La Triennale, Milan, Venice Architectural Biennale, Cornell University, Ithaca, MAO Ljubljana, and Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art, Genoa.
Anna is based in Genoa, Italy.
Raised in Sofia, Bulgaria and trained as a painter from an early age, his work arises from an early fascination with the Renaissance and Medieval eras. Stamenov utilizes computer graphic imagery as his primary medium, often to render the uncanny side of a simple event or a movement in a composition, exaggerating its insignificance in an extraordinary manner.
George Stamenov was born in 1988 and lives and works in London, United Kingdom. He completed undergraduate studies at Willem De Kooning Academie and postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Art. His work was featured in The Bloomberg New Contemporaries for two consecutive years (2018, 2019); NOT A LIVE SHOW Bonington Gallery, Nottingham (2018); Working Projects - Inhabiting the Dome at Whiteleys Shopping Center (2018); Water Tower Festival Bulgaria (2012).
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/
"My interest lies in the role of narrative as a reference point in representing contemporary social issues. I work between editorial assignments and long-term projects, taking pride in immersing myself within the place and people that I photograph, working with communities over an extended period of time."
Past works have documented the socio-political effects of the Ukrainian revolution; explored notions of escapism along The English Riviera; living in hiding with Albanian families persecuted in the age old traditions of blood feuds, as well as celebratory traditions in Greece. Previously exhibited works have been included in The Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize, PhotoIreland Festival, Paris Photo, Magenta Flash Forward and The Renaissance Photography Prize and clients include The FT Weekend Magazine, The New York Times, TIME and National Geographic.
Francisco Menezes (b. 1993) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Lisbon, Portugal. He studied photography at Ar.Co, completed his studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon and attended the Maumaus Independent Study Programme. Comprising installation and photography, Menezes’ practice interrogates objecthood alongside the original notion of the ‘absolute’ — from ab (off) + solver (to loosen) — or as philosopher Hent De Vries puts it, ‘that which tends to loosen its ties to existing contexts’. This serves as an entrance point to poke at our current systems of emplacement of the Capitalocene age. It’s the detours around this very emplacement occurring between the delocalized and the hyperlocalized that constitute his body of work. Selected exhibitions in the past include the ‘Paula Rego Prize’ at CHPR (2017, 2018), ‘Lovers’ and ‘Our Slice of Time’ at Zaratan (2022), ‘Paródia Cega’ (2024) at Museu Bordalo Pinheiro, ‘Poetics of Approximation’ at Budapest Galéria (2025), among others. In 2025, Menezes was awarded the Lisbon City Council Grant for an artistic exchange in Budapest. He is currently part of the applied research group ‘Organismo’ from Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza/TBA21.
With his interest in the glorifying and influential nature of photographs and images, Jeroen Bocken investigates the increasingly prominent role of hyper-idealised aesthetics in today’s world. Bocken is fascinated by natural science, human criteria and calculations and the limitations of the camera. He combines a variety of digital processes with natural patterns and algorithms. This experimental and associative process results in illogically constructed images. The photographer alternates these with classic “documentary” images – often iconic and familiar – to create an ambiguous context.
The interplay between real and constructed images requires vigilance. By playing these extreme methods off against each other, Bocken reminds us that an image never really shows the ultimate reality but is only capable of representing it. The image is a documentation, a snapshot and a notion of reality. It has the unequivocal power to steer our interpretation and perception in one direction.
New digital advances, such as 3D renders, mean that hyper-constructed images are being unleashed on the world at a dizzying rate. These immaculate, aesthetic and fabricated renderings are increasingly wrong-footing us and impacting on our perceptions. It is only with effort that we can distinguish the “picture perfect” from reality. Bocken is very intrigued by this ironic and surrealistic fact. By twisting and distorting the technical processing of his own images, and embracing the faults, Bocken explores the boundaries of our sense of reality.
Text by Eléa De Winter
Since they first met in United States, Elsa and Johanna have been working together as a duo of artists photographers and directors. They were invited at 61th Salon de Montrouge in 2016, finalists for the prize 'HSBC pour la photographie 2016', nominated the same year for 'Révélations Emerige 2016' and invited at Festival Circulation(s) 2017 and Festival Photo Saint-Germain 2017. They won the 2nd prize of 'Prix Picto de la mode 2017'. In 2018, their piece A Couple of Them enters the collection of the FMAC. Elsa & Johanna recently won the Public Prize at the 2019 Hyères Festival in the photo section.
The project 'The lost paracosmist' is an animated short film by multimedia artist Josephina van de Water. Using digital photography, printed celluloid film, paint, digital scans, video montage, cardboard and extreme patience, she brings a fictitious world to life in fascinating detail. The film was made in the traditional, time-consuming way that requires particular dedication, with each frame individually handcoloured as was done in the first colour movies.
The imaginary island of Paperland is inhabited by a colourful collection of talking animals. Josephina van de Water wrote and narrated the dialogue, giving each animal its own voice, tone and place in her universe. The chronicle guides us through a logical, yet fictitious, tale, in which we learn about Paperland’s geography, history, language, culture and religion.
As in every good fable, imagination is closely accompanied by reflection. While The lost paracosmist focuses on the irresistible charms of storytelling, it also warns the audience to beware of stories. They have the power to contort our perception of the world and disturb our relationship with reality.
The endearing cardboard animals in their warm, glowing colours, and the gentle, motherly voice of the narrator, are reminiscent of children’s programmes. However, the topics covered in this allegory are anything but childish: territorial disputes, political and religious authority and mechanisms of exclusion and esteem all make an appearance, allowing inequality and frustration to creep into this seemingly safe cosmos.
- Text by Geert Goiris (.tiff)
Polina Davydenko works mostly with the medium of photography overlapping with the media of video, audio and text. The key theme of her work is narrative and its various forms. She focuses on human-animal relationships and cultural stereotypes related to the issue. These become the starting point for playing out other contexts, which the author visually sensitively connects into one disturbing message.
Polina was born in Ukraine, but since childhood she lives in Czech Republic. She completed study at the Ivars Gravlejs’ Photography Studio at the FFA BUT in Brno. She has furthered her education at KASK in Gent, FAMU in Prague and at the FFA’s Studio Environment.
https://polidavydenko.tumblr.com/
Marta Szymanska is a photography curator from Poland. She has been creating Fotofestiwal - International Festival of Photography in Lodz since 2004 and Fotofestiwal Collective since 2017. She gained experience in curatorial work and organizational management as vice president of the Archeology of Photography Foundation (2014-2019) which which is dedicated to preserving photographic archives. Marta cooperates also with Sputnik Photos, the collective of photographers from Central and Eastern Europe. Her curatorial experience includes exhibitions: “Tender Attention” (2021, Museum of Art in Lodz), “Long life for Belarus” (2021; Pilecki Institute in Berlin, Festival of Journalism in Insbruck, Austria), “Be a Lady - contemporary woman photographers in Belarus” (2020, Month of Photography in Minsk), „On the Verge” (2022, 2023; Fotofestiwal Lodz; Camera - Centro Italiano per Fotografia, Torino; Copenhagen Photo Festival).Marta is an active portfolio reviewer and she supports artists in their creative process. She graduated with a degree in literature and language studies, so she is particularly interested in building relationships between photographs and text in a project. In addition, she is interested in activist and engaged practices, archive-based projects and photography from Central and Eastern Europe.
Andrei Budescu has been fascinated by cameras and photography since he was a young boy. Over the last 10 years he has been experimenting with different photographic processes (Polaroid, Wet Plate Collodion) and different cameras (4x5, 5x7, 8x10 cameras). Andrei uses different cameras for his processes and recently he started refurbishing a mammoth camera for his Wet Plate Collodion Process which will be added to his collection.
Her aim is to make the spectator observe and to be observed at the same time. While we watch others, we are being watched too. The desire of observing one another, of having insight into the lives of others posits a system of norms based on which we define ourselves compared to others. We want to confirm that we have similar problems as others, that we are better than or just as good as they are. In other words, that we only deviate from the average on an average scale.
Her works explore how we can describe our body in the most objective manner possible, to represent it without any intimacy whatsoever. Looking at these so-called anti-intimate states, the works examine all the subtle and complex relationships our physical extension forms with our environment, and how social expectations shape our appearance. Personal stories and critical observations regarding the body are represented along with abstract objects and intertwined sculptural bodies. Her fundamental medium is photography that she often combines with other disciplines, such as objects, photobooks or video.