Marta Machado is a Portuguese-Cape Verdean artist who lives and works in Braga, Portugal. A graduate of Architecture from the University of Minho, she also holds an MA in Photography from the School of Arts at the Catholic University of Porto. Her photographic work analyses the ambiguities of history and the so-called ‘official’ narratives of the Western world, focusing on themes of colonialism, identity and territory. Machado’s Beyond Solid Ground project was exhibited at Braga’s Encontros da Imagem festival, whilst her Nos Txôn series was presented at Lisbon’s Imago Gallery. Her academic research, meanwhile, has been widely published in peer-reviewed journals.
Josh Kern (*1993), currently based in Leipzig, Germany, graduated with a bachelor's degree in photography at the FH Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts in 2022. Between 2018 and 2021, Josh Kern has published three books: "Räuber" (Eigensinn Publishing), "Love Me" (Eigensinn Publishing), and "Fuck me" (dienacht Publishing).
A self-taught photographer, he has built his creative practice by travelling around Kazakhstan and shooting uncanny, unpredictable vistas.
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).
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)
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.
Michał Patycki (b. 1995) is a Polish visual artist based in Czechia. He holds a BA in Creative Photography from the Silesian University in Opava. In his artistic practice, Patycki often applies both photography and other forms of visual art. Photography gives him the opportunity to approach unknown realities, which he can work through with the resulting image. The strength of his work comes first and foremost from its authenticity; each subject he tackles is examined thoroughly through in-depth research – searching in each instance for a suitable method of self-expression. Patycki often works with photographic archives, and plays with stories that may or may not have happened at all. His works have been exhibited in Poland and abroad.
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
Irene Zottola is a self-taught photographer; in 2016, she began honing her skills in the laboratory of Madrid’s Slow Photo collective. Her poetic works probe at the limits of analogue photography, which she often pairs with text. Working simultaneously as an arts educator, Zottola explores photography as a tool for social intervention amongst vulnerable groups. Her first photobook, Icarus, was published by Ediciones Anómalas in 2021. With the same project, Zottola was a finalist at PhotoEspaña, and at the Photobook Awards of Les Rencontres d'Arles in 2022. Her work has been exhibited in Spain, Italy and Morocco.
A common thread throughout his practice is an interest in the metaphorical potential of photographs. His project, ‘John’s Notebooks’ (2020-2021), pulls on the symbolism present with the landscape of the home to touch on the emotions and memories connected to the childhood loss of his father. Whereas his most recent work ‘Murmurations’ (2020-21), employs the starling murmuration as a symbol to reflect on the current global crisis and the act of coming together and converging as a group.
Barraclough is a recent graduate of the MA Photography programme at Bristol UWE and is due to exhibit his master’s project, ‘John’s Notebooks’, at the 2021 Bristol Photo Festival.
Yao Yuan (b. 1988) is a non-binary artist born in Sichuan, China. Their practice navigates between photography, design and moving image. Using documentation and staging, their photographic work expresses an intrinsic curiosity for intersectionality and spirituality. Their investigations explore the power of storytelling and dramaturgy, to rethink the binary framework of dominant norms, particularly those that relate to gender and sexuality. In recent years, the focus of Yuan’s work has touched upon topics of non-normative narratives surrounding motherhood, queer intimacy and representation.
His work has been exhibited in different countries, such as Austria, Poland, China and Denmark. His recent project ¥€$U$ was showed at Hamburg Triannale in 2018.
Martina Dendi (Livorno, 1994) lives and works in Milan. She graduated in photography at the Libera Accademia di Belle Arti (LABA) in Florence and, in 2017, she attended the Stephen F. Austin State University (SFASU) in Texas. In 2018, Dendi attended the course of New Technologies at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, where she graduated in 2021 with a specialization in Photography. In 2019, she studied for a semester at Moholy-Nagy Művészeti Egyetem, in Budapest.
In 2017, Dendi publishes her first photo book Caducità who has been also exhibited as solo show at the Tethys Gallery in Florence, and as part of a group show at Seipersei gallery in Siena. She exhibits the photographic project Assenza at the Stephen F. Austin State University (SFASU) in Texas. In 2020 she exhibits Hungarian Style at CAREOF (Milan). In 2021 her work has been selected among the finalists of the Combat Award 2021.
Her works start from an anthropological approach of interest on grotesque and ironic side of life. She is often actress and subject of her images, exploring the therapeutic process of self-definition and awareness of her presence in the world.
martinadendi21@hotmail.it https://edu.myphotoportal.com/dendi/
Balázs Szigligeti is a Budapest-based photographer, who studied at The Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. His work explores the boundaries between reality and fantasy. With a foundation in digital post-processing techniques, he establishes a kind of dreamworld; his artworks celebrate the human body, plasticity, queer culture, his hedonistic friends and life itself.
Instagram: szigligetiphotography
In 2015, he began his solo career with focus in “landscape and associated behavior”. His projects evolved from painting to more conceptual processes, expanding his language to photography, video and actions in the landscape.
As center of his concerns are the humankind relationships with territory, studying aspects such as: the gradual reduction of space for wildlife, “The Naked Trace“, the overpopulation, "Genesis 1.28", the artificial character of the borders "Minimal Republics", the liquid nature of the concept of nation: "Iceberg Nations" or the dichotomy between industrial agriculture and natural agriculture: "The garden of Fukuoka".
He has presence in important collections, specially within Spain, and is beginning to exhibit abroad like the two solo shows that will take place in late 2019: one at Lianzhou Museum of Photography, China, and the other at Encontros da Imagem, Braga, Portugal, as winner of 2018 “Emergentes” award.