Born in Taranto (Italy) in 1994 and his approach to photography came unexpectedly in 2016 with the discovery of some disused cameras belonging to his father. This prompted him the following year to deepen his knowledge by beginning a three-year degree program in Photography and Visual Arts at IED (Istituto Europeo di Design) Rome, graduating with honors in 2019.In 2023 he completed his studies by earning a master's degree at lSIA (Istituti Superiori per le Industrie Artistiche) in Urbino in Photography for publishing and cultural heritage.His work has been published in several magazines and has found space in various group and solo exhibitions in Italy and around the world, including Thailand, England and Germany (some of the latest “Accepting the Void” at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, and “L'altro Deserto Rosso” at the Italian Cultural Institute of Montreal in Canada). In 2020, he published “Abisso”, his first photography book with DITO Publishing.
Giulia Vanelli (b.1996) is an Italian photographer based in Tuscany whose work explore concepts such us memory and identity, always driven by an evocative approach. She uses symbols as a causal link between visible and invisible, capturing the most enigmatic and hidden aspect of reality. She graduated from the BA Photography at Libera Accademia di Belle Arti of Florence in 2019 after spending a schooling period at Stephen F. Austin University, Texas. In 2020 she was selected for the artistic residency at Fabrica, Benetton’s communication research center. In 2023 she was selected by the British Journal of Photography as one of the fifteen most promising emerging photographers from all over the world. Her work has been shown in group and solo exhibition in international festivals and galleries, including Fotografia Europea (Reggio Emilia, 2021), Galerie Joseph Le Palais (Paris, 2022) and 1014 Gallery (London, 2022). In 2024 her first book The Season has been published by Witty Books.
His pictures appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, British Journal of Photography, Internazionale, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times Weekend, Vogue and Vice.
He participated in several exhibitions, including at United Nations (Geneva, Switzerland, 2013) at Venice Biennale of Architecture (Venice, Italy, 2016) and Head On Photo Festival (Sidney, Australia, 2020).
In 2019 he published “Era Mare”, a book about the high water in Venice, whose proceeds went totally to the shopkeepers who needed help.
For his work about Covid-19 Matteo won the REFOCUS award by Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities (Italy) and according to ARTRIBUNE he’s the Best Italian young photographer of 2020.
Lorenzo uses the photography as a way of expression; he refines his technique during a long collaboration in the backstages for several fashion brands, a collaboration that still exists.
The skills acquired will allow Lorenzo to express himself creatively.
Through the use of a camera he captures images that evoke emotions and thoughts; he is not a lover of photographic manipulation through programs, in fact he creates installations to recreate what he thought and felt while visiting those places.
Bärbel Reinhard (b. 1977) is a German artist, teacher and curator based in Tuscany, Italy. After graduating in Art History, Sociology and Modern German Literature at Humboldt-University Berlin, she followed a three-year photography programme at Florence’s Fondazione Studio Marangoni. Her work has been exhibited in various shows in Italy and abroad, whilst her images have been published by the likes of Liberation, La Republica and Phroom. The main focus of Reinhard’s work lies in the characteristics and limits of photography as a time-space-tied medium. Moving between observational photography, mixed media installations, assemblages and collages with both her own and found material, she works primarily on long-term projects.
Instagram: thefoxisred
Website: www.baerbelreinhard.com
She obtained a master’s degree in Photography at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in 2016. In 2013, she spent a semester in Brussels with Erasmus, later, she completed her mandatory internship in Paris with Erasmus+.
In 2013 she was selected to the top 100 of Google Photography Prize. In 2014 she won a grant to organise her first solo exhibition titled Bleu, which took place at Gallery Várfok Project Room, Budapest. In 2015 her series Animalia Variabilis was shortlisted at the 5th World Biennal of Student Photography, Novi Sad.
In recent years, her photos gained exposure in various places including the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art Budapest, the Mai Manó House, the Vienna Photobook Festival, the Berlin Photobook Festival, the Mark Grosset Prize, Vendôme, the Kiscell Museum , and the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center and der Grief magazine.
She is a member since 2012, and a board member since 2020, of the Studio of Young Photographers. She lives and works in Budapest, Hungary.
Wathne studied Visual Arts at the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art and Photography at the Norwegian School of Photography.
The Land of Promises is an invitation to explore transnational and transracial adoption in China and Belgium, both in the present day and in the past. One can imagine that during China’s one-child policy era Belgium represented “the promised land” for baby girls whose parents had to give them up. And yet, as Youqine Lefèvre’s work unfolds, and she moves from her parents’ archives to her own images, the perspective shifts. When she visits her birth country, China becomes the land of promises — of finding her roots? Her birth family? Herself?
Such an ambitious promise is easy to break, which explains the palpable melancholy in Youqine Lefèvre’s pictures. Her work also conveys the ambiguity of her position: as an adult adoptee visiting her birth country, she is “an outsider within”, so close to her photographic subjects and yet so far away. From this perspective, art is the new land of promises for Lefèvre, who uses multiple supports (film, paper, etc.) in her photographic practice to create a world where she can live her truths. The work produced by the artist thus generates the artist. Youqine Lefèvre is not only reclaiming her own narrative, but challenging the status of archives that in her hands become both art and a political statement.
Ultimately, The Land of Promises is an invitation to decentre whiteness and the Global North in the visual narrative surrounding transnational and transracial adoption.
- Text by Amandine Gay (.TIFF)
Cloe Jancis (b. 1992) is an artist working with photography, video, drawing and installation. In 2018, she graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts with a BA in photography, and is currently following an MA programme in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Jancis is fascinated by the social image and daily roles of women – and the related myths, expectations and feelings they evoke. In recent years, her work has focused on objects and rituals associated with performing femininity.
Mentored by the Magnum photographer Carl De Keyzer, he chose not to show the war in the east, but to focus on the aspects of life presented to him in the capital Kiev. By his active presence his work functions as an extension on the early 20th century documentary approach and tends to reveal universal questions rather then to depict actual proof of fact.
While working on two new projects, David is finishing the dummy book of Let Us Not Fall Asleep with the input of British Ukrainian researcher and cultural manager Myroslava Hartmond. Within the book the images will be interconnected with referential sources, testimonies and reflections on the impact that both media and politics have on the hybrid war that is putting strains on the Ukrainian dream and experience of freedom. This book will be published at the end of 2018, exactly 5 years after the start of the hybrid war.
Laure Winants is a researcher and field-based visual artist (BE, FR). Winants set up her artist’s studio in the heart of the Arctic ice pack. Embarked on a four-month polar expedition, she joined a team of multidisciplinary researchers to understand the evolution of this vast territory, where man is only a tiny part of life. Immersed in this white desert, she uses techniques developed specifically to capture the optical and luminous phenomena unique to the region. Using environmental sensors, the interaction of matter itself has become the creator of the work, putting human intervention to one side. Laure Winants makes this data tangible and emotionally perceptible, highlighting the interdependence of ecosystems and creating encounters in more-than-human temporalities. In this way, the artist creates a dialogue between art, the natural sciences, and technology.
Laure has exhibited her work internationally in Berlin (DE), Reykjavik (IS), Brussels (BE), Paris (FR), and soon in Stockholm (SE), Luxembourg (LU), and Osaka (JP). Her work has entered the collection of several foundations, such as the Fondation des Arts du Luxembourg and the Palais de Liège (BE).
Her work has been recently exhibited in numerous venues, including JAP vitrine, Brussels (2023), IKOB Museum, Eupen (2023), Antwerp Art Weekend (2023), CIAP, Genk (2022), Centrale Vitrine, Brussels (2021), Frac Grand Large — Hauts-de-France, Dunkerque (2021-22), and S.M.A.K Museum, Ghent (2021). She has also gained international recognition through exhibitions in Paris, Germany, Athens, and Caracas.
In recent years, Padilla has been granted numerous residencies and awards including the Fiminco Foundation residency in Paris (2022-23) and long-term residency at Moussem Nomadic Art Centre in Brussels (2023-). She received the Sabam prize of ArtContest in Brussels in 2020, the prize of the Watch This Space biennial in Lille in 2022, and was one of the laureates of the Friends of S.M.A.K prize in Ghent in 2021. Her work is currently on view at The Kunstverein Friedrichshafen in Germany. In 2024, Padilla was selected for the MINO Female Artist Mentorship program with mentors Otobong Nkanga and Léonard Pongo, and will be part of the MLeuven residency program at Cas-co in Leuven and Morpho residency program in Antwerp.
Yana Wernicke is a German photographer. In 2021 her first photo-book, Zenker, a collaboration with Jonas Feige, was published by Edition Patrick Frey. She is currently working on a new project on the concepts of species loneliness and interspecies relationships.
He is interested in the image and imbrication of this medium with other disciplines such as sculpture and installation. As well as visual media, music and the creation of scenography and environments. Trying to convey an experience, an event or a state of mind is his main excuse when developing a project.
He investigates the relationship between the individual and his environment, about the spaces we inhabit and about contemporary forms of domestic life and the state of the objects that inhabit an era of wild mediatic reproduction. His work process is based on finding, combining and remixing poor materials, found objects and waste, signs that encourage him to experiment with new ways of interpreting what surrounds us.
More: https://christianlagata.com/
Lucrezia's work focuses on two main themes: individual and collective perception and mnemonic practices in archival research. Materiality, its three-dimensional presence and tactile sensations are essential for the elaboration of her photographic research, which takes shape in the moment of installation and fruition. The initial focus on an inner perception has developed over the years into a reflection on the perception of archival material and the layers of memory, leading to a phenomenological investigation of the photographic act.
Time at work, this time which rushes, always too short, it is this which Csilla Klenyànszki addresses in her performative and photographic games. Of course, this artistic approach is accepted, being defined by a sum of constraints which might be resumed here as follows: the daily siesta of a child, the domestic setting imposed by this siesta, or thirty minutes for creation. Pillars of Home is a series of variations upon a single theme that is as dizzying as it is absurd. In thirty minutes flat, within this confined frame and with no more than plants, plastic beakers, a vacuum cleaner, table, chair, teapot and other utensils (with the inclusion of her own body, an object which she does not hesitate to contribute and contort), this artist provides ninety-six answers held in a fragile balance between the floor and the ceiling of her apartment. We are amused by one, stunned by another. Yet none of them impose a superiority as, more than just the form, it is the process and the accumulation of experiences which the photographer wishes to highlight: not the beauty of the sculpture nor the skill of its assembly, but the action of an artist who wishes to oppose time with a mischievous and vital fantasy. Ephemeral, yes, but certainly not trivial.