Images are, for Nicole Rafiki, a thinking force. She produces imaginaries in a disparity of media, photography one of them. The normativity of thought comes from a multiplicity of machines of knowledge production, including but not limited to education, exhibition spaces, and the media. A social practice means interacting and constantly challenging the presupposed universal self such an information sphere produces. In a global economy and flow of disjunctive hierarchies and modes of being, culture moves in a disruptive way through the migration of people across borders, geographies, and time. Rafiki points to such complex and conflictual past, presentness, and future. The image, the imagined, the imaginary move from a world defined mainly by concrete purposes to structure negotiations and possibilities.
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.
Nikhil Vettukattil (1990, Bengaluru, India) is an artist and writer who lives and works in Oslo.
He uses a range of media such as sound, installation, performance, text, sculpture, and video, his practice questions modes of representation and image-making processes related to lived experiences. He has previously exhibited at venues such as Kunsthall Oslo (2022), K-U-K, Trondheim (2021), CAPC, Bordeaux (2021), Art Hub Copenhagen (2021), K4 Galleri, Oslo (2021), Louise Dany, Oslo (2020), EKA Gallery, Tallinn (2020), Kristiansand Kunsthall (2020), and Le Bourgeois, London (2019). Forthcoming exhibitions include Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo, and the National Museum of Norway, both taking place in June 2022. He is a member of Tenthaus and Carrie's art collectives and a part of Atelier Kunstnerforbundet (2021-2023).
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.
Ana Núñez Rodríguez studied Documentary Photography and Contemporary Creation at IDEP Barcelona, holds a postgraduate degree in Photography from the National University of Colombia and holds a Master degree in Photography and Society from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KABK) in The Hague. She was part of Lighthouse 2020-21, a program for upcoming talents at Fotodok, Utrecht.
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.
Through long term projects she explores the topics of death, immortality as well as the relationship between photography and extinction. She is part of PARALLEL - European Photo Based Platform, Haute Photographie Talents and was selected as the GUP New Talent of the year 2020.
Just as much a physical experience which disturbs the tranquil surface of the photograph as a workshop narrative with a documentary character, Laetitia Bica’s series Cream, cannot be confined to a single genre. Following two years of collaborations with the CREAHM workshop in Liège (Creativity and Mental handicap), she undertook two months of intense research with the workshop’s artists, the result of which is this corpus of disruptive and vibrant photographs. Collaboration, a creative process which is a daily part of this photographer’s life as she typically works on commission in the areas of fashion, music, and design, in these photographs is transmitted through the body. Gestures, colours and materials become elements of language during their creative exchanges. Thus unfolds a series of figures covered in paint with thick and bold features and accents that are at times wild, at times warlike. A few of the images, placed in a sequence, follow an artist’s movement, rendering the in progress nature of this experiment and indicating Laetitia Bica’s double position on what takes on the appearance of almost ritualistic practices: at the same time actor and master of ceremonies.
Josef Janošík (b. 1995) is a photographer based in the Czech Republic. In his work, he searches for and relives his childhood memories – however corroded and unreliable they may be. Exploring the limits of human perception is important for him in general as well as the elusive uncertainty that lies behind them.
"My work focusses on absence. Absence that we try to fill in with information. My mother found her biological family through a Dutch television show and even though she was reunited with relatives, many questions remain, including why she was given up for adoption. My mother was born in Spain in 1964, when dictator Francisco Franco was ruling. It always felt strange not being able to talk about my mother’s past simply because we don’t know exactly what happened. With my work, I’m there for exploring the process of reconstruction, and the distortion of narrative within memory.
The projects I make are dealing with the relationship between politics, media and citizens. How these three opponents feed each other, need each other, but also exist in a constant power struggle. I examine the reliability of the image in the post-truth era, it forms a grey area where fact and fiction live close to each other. This is the area from where I position myself.
My visual language is based on what I see in the media and comes from the connection I had with the tv show where we discovered my relatives. The show shaped and directed my memory so much and intrigued me a lot. I am therefore also specifically interested in that what has been manipulated.
I use artificial light in order to give a cinematic feeling to the work, which is based on emotions that tries to lure its audience into believing what is created in front of them.
In my work I take on the role of a director that investigates what truth means in modern times."
Inuuteq Storch, born in 1989, Sisimiut, Greenland. Based in Copenhagen and Sisimiut.
I studied at Fatamorgana – The Danish School of Art Photography in 2010 and at the International Center of Photography in New York in 2016. After that, I published the following books: Porcelain Souls, Flesh and Mirrored – Portraits of Good Hope.
My work is based on identity searching, which means the subject is usually around being from Greenland.
I work with my photography and archives.
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.
In 2013 his project “A3_Sa-Rc” is shortlisted for the architekturbild - European Prize for Architectural photography - (DAM, German museum of Architecture, Frankfurt ). Selected exhibitions: Museum of Estonian Architecture, KazimKuba, Kassel (2014); Vhs photogalerie, Stuttgart; International tag der Architektur, Vilnius; DAM, German Museum of Architecture, Frankfurt, GER (2013).
In 2014 the first version of his book project “Dahiye” is shortlisted for the fotobookfestival dummy award (Kassel, Germany). Selected exhibitions: Athens Photo Festival, The Photobook Museum, Cologne; PhotoIreland, Dublin, MIA Image Art Fair, Milan; Fotogaleriet, Oslo; Le Bal, Paris; Fotoleggendo, Rome (2014). In the same year Armando Perna joins the “Third Island Ag ’64 ’94 ’14” a research project dedicated to the promotion of an interdisciplinary and historical reflection on large-scale infrastructures in Italy curated by Antonio Ottomanelli. In this frame he presents “A3_Sa-Rc”, his work on the Southern Italy A3 Sa-Rc highway. “The Third Island” is published in 2016 by Planar books, and exposed at the Triennale Museum in Milan and at Palazzo Poli in Rome.
In 2017 his work on Dahiye and Shatila is presented at Pino Pascali Museum of Polignano a Mare (BA).
Vic Bakin (b. 1984) is a self-educated Ukrainian photographer. In Kyiv, the artist explores various local groups – queer and fashion scenes, rave and music culture, and even closed communities like student dormitories. In light of new and evolving local circumstances, Bakin’s focus has since shifted to the subject of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. His diaristic personal projects use of analogue photography to probe at questions of identity; with Void, Bakin is currently working on his debut photobook.
In 2016 her book "The Modern Spirit Is Vivisective” won the ViennaPhotoBookAward. Her work has been presented and exhibited internationally, including Plat(t)form 2017, Fotomuseum Winterthur; Fotografia Europea, Reggio Emilia; Benaki Museum, Athens; Noorderlicht Photofestival, Groningen; Emerging Talents, MACRO Factory, Rome; Festival Circulations, CENTQUATRE-PARIS, Paris; and Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome.
Her latest work Petrus, published by Kehrer Verlag, reflects on a certain rhetoric of masculinity in Western culture. Through a cynical, tender and arbitrary analysis of what probably cannot be sliced and diced Francesca Catastini plays with archetypes and images considering the way they sculpt ourselves and shape our views. Looking for subtle discrepancies her images go beyond their figurative meaning in order to activate new analogies and connotations.
http://francescacatastini.it/
In her most recent work, Rie Yamada stages self-portraits through other people, finding her source matter in family photo albums acquired from Japan, her homeland, and Germany, where she now lives, recreating scenes in her own likeness. Highlighting gender stereotypes and social archetypes, her often humorous work questions not just the family, but the changing role of photography itself in expressing how we want to be perceived. The images are, in a sense, a search for her own image, in the same way a family photo is intended to define and project their identity.