Ania Vouloudi (b. 1987) is a photographer, video artist and poet with a background in civil engineering. She currently lives and works in Thessaloniki, Greece. Chronicling her life in analogue images, Vouloudi’s artistic work presents docufiction stories that address the apparent banality of daily routine. Her approach is both low-fi and unpretentious. Rooted in photography, the installations she creates also feature audio, writing and objects. Zine-making is another important feature of Vouloudi’s practice; she has collaborated with Void since its inception, co-publishing two zines in 2016 and 2017.
As an artist, she works across a wide range of media including photography, installations, textile sculptures, interventions into urban space, etc. since 2012.
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
Michaela Nagyidaiová (b. 1996) is a Slovakian photographer based in Bratislava. Her work analyses connections between landscape, memory, identity, migration, and the topographies of Central and Eastern Europe. Interested in how ideologies and political systems influence layers of personal life – and drawing inspiration from both past events and contemporary issues – Nagyidaiová works on long-term projects that combine images with text, archival material and video. She holds an MA in Photojournalism & Documentary Photography from the London College of Communication, and is a member of Women Photograph. Her Transient Ties project was exhibited at Fotograf Festival in Prague’s National Gallery, and at a series of further shows in Czechia, Slovenia and Austria. In 2021, Nagyidaiová participated in the Wolf Suschitzky Photography Prize exhibition at the Austrian Cultural Forum in London & Fotohof in Salzburg, as well as in the British Journal of Photography’s Open Walls ’21: Then and Now exhibition at Galerie Huit in Arles.
Laura San Segundo (b. 1990) studied Fine Arts at Madrid’s Complutense University, followed by an MA at Efti International School of Photography and Cinema. Her personal projects have since run alongside commissioned work and a series of teaching roles. A recipient of various scholarships and residencies, Segundo’s projects have been exhibited internationally. With a playful but thoughtful methodology, her work makes conceptual connections between different image types, exploring their many layers of meaning – and how their meaning can be altered by visual strategies like cropping, fragmenting and decontextualising.
Ieva Baltaduonyte (b.1988 in Kaunas, Lithuania) is a lens based artist and graduate of thePhotography BA programme at the Dublin Institute of Technology. Informed by her own personal experience of displacement, her artistic practice engages with topics and issues relating to migratory culture. Central to her work are the psychological consequences of migration, such as displacement trauma, as well as the concepts home, identity and the in-between state. After spending seventeen years living in Dublin, Ireland, Ieva has recently returned to her native Lithuania, where she is currently based. Transnational migration is perhaps the most highly contested issue across Europe. For new migrants spatial and temporal displacement is potentially traumatic, resulting in shifting identities where home can no longer be understood as a fixed knowable entity. Ieva is preoccupied with revealing personal and collective narratives where trauma, identity and memory encourage a deeper engagement with cross-cultural dialogue. By using photography for both personal expression and to foster a critical dialogue with contemporary society, she invites the viewer to participate in societal debates, foregrounding human experiences, and exposing what is otherwise obscured or ignored. Her carefully constructed projects combine politics and aesthetics inviting a dialogical relationship with the viewer.
Browsing through Allyssa Heuze’s photographs is, one rapidly remarks, like taking one path and unexpectedly finding oneself on another. A slide leads us to a pair of buttocks encircled by a hoop, a baseball player hits a home run which leads us to two small breasts drawn by the shadowed outline of two plump apples, and even to those gazed upon by another young man, his head submerged beneath a t-shirt. References to play punctuate Allyssa Heuze’s labyrinthine journey between her images: ball games, gymnastics, role play. This photographer’s preferred terrain is the studio, where she seems to take pleasure in constructing her dramas and her absurd scenarios. Herein this white cube willingly yields, where one may make believe that the real, the duration of the photographic shot, has no hold. She invites her friends within, a banana and doughnuts, an erupting volcano, and an aeroplane vulva in an inventory that is all the more burlesque as it is presented through a precise, almost clinical, photographic vocabulary. A balanced light, controlled reflections, a careful composition: together they hold all of the attributes of a style with a perfect appearance that this photographer – who certainly knows all of its rules – takes pleasure in making slip.
Fred Mungo (b. 1994) is an Italian photographer and visual artist, currently based between London and Bologna. Born in Rieti, she first moved to London in 2013 to study. Mungo holds a BA in Fashion Photography from London College of Fashion (University of the Arts of London), and an MA in Photography and Urban Cultures from Goldsmiths University. Her artistic research sits within the framework of visual sociology.
Kevin Osepa is a photographer born and raised on the island of Curaçao. His work revolves around his identity and the identity of Afro-Caribbean youth in a post-colonial world. The visuals he creates and the stories he tells are highly influenced by his youth. While the themes he explores are autobiographical, his work can also serve as a quasi-anthropological study. Using different experimental techniques, he creates colourful visual stories that explore themes such as religion, African diaspora, and family.
Since graduating his work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including Steenbergen Stipendium, Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst prijs, Unseen photography festival, FOAM Editions - as well as publications such as the Trouw newspaper, Volkskrant Magazine and Unseen Magazine. He was also nominated for multiple awards - in 2018, he became the youngest person ever to be nominated for the prestigious Volkrant fine art prize.
Konstantin Zhukov (1990) lives and works between Riga and London. After graduating from Riga Secondary School of Design and Art, Zhukov continued his studies at Central Saint Martins and London College of Communication in the United Kingdom.
He has participated in exhibitions and book art fairs including Paris Ass Book Fair at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Strange Perfume at South London Gallery, Queer Frontiers by Artiq and Pride in London, Riga Photography Biennale: NEXT 2021 and Riga Photomonth. Most recently, Zhukov has opened a solo show Black Carnation part 2 at ISPP gallery in Riga and is preparing to take part in the fourth edition of Paris Ass Book Fair at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris.
Konstantin’s work has been published internationally both online and in print in such publications as i-D, CAP74024 and Arterritory. His work "An essay on self-confidence and homoerotic Islamic poetry”, originally published in Jezga magazine Vol. 2, was translated into Russian and published on Открытые (o-zine.ru) – a pioneering LGBTQ+ publication based in Moscow.
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.
Paolo Ciregia (b. 1987) is an Italian artist. After experience as a reporter at the forefront of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, in the last five years his artistic research has been focused on Ukraine context, manipulating and reworking his personal archive in a new way. Investigating and deconstructing both archives symbols and language, Ciregia aims to reveal the atrocities behind the war, destroying the propaganda patina through installations and sculptures. His work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Among the major prizes are Winner of Talent FOAM Amsterdam 2016, Winner of “LOOP, Giovane Fotografia Italiana”, Festival Fotografia Europea 2017, “Honorable jury Mention” at Premio Francesco Fabbri 2016, TU35 at the Museo Pecci in Prato 2017, Winner of Leica Talent 2012.
http://www.paolociregia.eu/
Rebekka Deubner's work is full of narratives of metamorphosis, as close as possible to the earth and the bodies it carries. From the prefecture of Fukushima, where she made her first visit in 2014 and will return on several occasions, she has brought back indexical images, faces taken from encounters, seaweed and other living organisms she came across while wandering on the edge of the forbidden zone. Scattered into fragments by the catastrophe, they are traversed by the same palpable quivering, exuding signs of persistent vitality. The material of these bodies, the fluids that emanate from them and that they exchange, framed as closely as possible, are at the heart of the work entitled En surface, la peau, produced in the intimacy of the artist's love life. The act of photographing retains desire, counters its volatility, and ward off its loss. From this intimate exploration of the body and its profound movements, she moves on to the body as political territory, with Les saisons thermiques, an ensemble dedicated to male contraception. Here we find her way of slowly approaching the body and restoring its tender plasticity. In these bodies standing close to her, an alternative representation of masculinity is embodied. Framing and squeezing again with Strip, a work in progress made up of photograms and videos in which the artist attempts to become one with her late mother. Dressing her clothes and underwear, like counter-forms that still carry within them the latent trace of the body and epidermis that inhabited them, slipping into them and, in video performances, tying them up, patching them up and covering herself in them. Alongside these short films, Rebekka Deubner combines a collection of photograms of clothing, also fragmented, which, reassembled on the wall, sketch out the contours of a vast, warm body.Rebekka Deubner (1989), based in the Paris region, graduated in 2013 from the École de l'image Les Gobelins, Paris. She combines her personal practice with press and commercial photography, and teaches photography at ENSBA in Lyon.
Currently she is participating in the Masterclass at Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie in Berlin. Her work revolves around the relationship between humans and animals in context with animal agriculture.
I'm a photographer based in Brussels. After a stint at the École Nationale Supérieure de Photographie in Arles, France, I have developed my practice with the support of various art institutions, including Wiels Contemporary Art Center, Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, Centre photographique d'Île-de-France, FOMU in Antwerp, and Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire in Dakar. My work operates at the crossroads of official history, erased memory, and personal narrative, exploring the ecological, social, and spiritual transformations that marked the Brazilian Amazon at the turn of the 20th century. Through my practice, I examine the philosophical and phantasmal framework that sustain the ideals of discovery, conquest, and supremacy central to Western modernity, offering a subtle yet incisive reflection on their enduring impact.
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/
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.
Varvara Gorbunova is a portrait and documentary photographer based in Prague, Czech Republic. Her work often centres around intimacy and connection exploring themes such as longing, sensuality, family and identity. She is dedicated to representing her subjects with honesty and openness, highlighting their humanity and providing viewers with various ways to connect with their stories. Varvara’s photography invites to experience the raw, unfiltered moments of her subjects' lives, creating powerful narratives that resonate across cultures and backgrounds.
Varvara earned her BA in Photography at the Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) where she continues to study in pursuit of her Master’s degree. Her work has been featured in collective exhibitions across the globe including Prague (CZ), Rome (IT), Toronto (CA) , Amsterdam (NL) and shortlisted for various awards and festivals (Belfast Photo Festival, Fresh Eyes International Talents, Palm Photo Prize).
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/
Tina Farifteh is a Dutch-Iranian artist based in The Netherlands. She obtained master’s degrees in Economics and a bachelor’s degree in Arts. Thanks to this academic and cultural background, she is used to seeing the world from different angles.
She is a visual researcher whose work lies at the intersection between arts, politics and philosophy. Her interest lies in human nature and the politicization of ‘life’ – particularly, the administration and control of life. She is inspired by the work of philosophers Agamben, Foucault and Arendt. Specifically their concepts of ‘bare life’ and ‘biopolitics’.
In her work, she reflects on the impact of man-made power structures such as nation states and corporations on the lives of ordinary people. Often focusing on people stuck between the ‘natural’ life and the ‘conventional’ life. People not only excluded from the privileges granted by the ruling political and economic systems, but often damaged by these to make the system ‘work’. Her photographic approach is research-based and conceptual. Often combining images, text and data. The goal is to seduce us to look at topics that we prefer to look away from because of their complexity or discomfort.
In her earlier project Killer Skies (2018), she explored the impact of the ‘dronisation’ of armies. Currently she is researching and reflecting on the situation of refugees on the move or stuck at European borders. This work focuses on borders, bodies, and the political language used to normalize the absurdity of how we are currently dealing with these topics.
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.