Artist
Chloé Azzopardi
Her research revolves around ecology, new technologies and the construction of post-capitalocene imaginaries. She was an artist-in-residence at Villa Pérochon under the mentorship of Joan Fontcuberta. In 2025, she began a residency in regenerative design at Fondation Martell. Her work has been presented internationally in numerous festivals, galleries, and museums like Paris Photo, Rencontres d’Arles and Photo Élysée.
In 2024, she was invited by Sigma to present a large-scale exhibition combining multiple projects in Aranya and Shanghai. In 2027, she will present a solo exhibition at the Braunschweig Museum für Photographie. Supported by Fondation des Artistes for her project Tigre jaune sur fond bleu (2025), Azzopardi has received several awards and grants, including the CNAP support for contemporary documentary photography (2025).
Her first book, Non Technological Devices, will be published by Witty Books in 2026.
Non Technological Devices
Non technological devices are composite tools made from gleaned natural elements, assembled to mimic the technological devices that populate our daily lives. Between rudimentary productions and science-fiction creations, these objects are as much prolongations of bodies as they are hindrances. Together they create a fictional universe that functions as a mirror held up to our fantasies of the future.
With this project the artist wishes to create other desires, to produce images that can be resources for our imaginaries. How to think about alternative ways of collectively evolving in the face of our dreams of a hyper-artificialized world driven by the race for technical progress ?
Trying to move beyond the naïve optimisms of a return to the earth and technological solutionism, the artist looks for narratives that could help us to combat our political discouragement and enable us to take action in the face of environmental destruction. Using fiction and play, she thinks of other ways of imagining augmented lives, creating organic cyborgs whose purpose would be to inscribe human presence differently in the environment. She uses the poetic diversion of artefacts that are symbols of technical progress to question our relationship with the living, extractivism and the disappearance of the earthly resources exploited to build the components of our technological objects.
FOMU invites three external jurors to help select the artists. This year’s jury consisted of Youqine Léfevre (artist and .tiff 2021 participant), Magali Elali (founding artistic director of The Constant Now) and Cale Garrido (curator of the Triennial of Photography Hamburg).
The jury made the selection based on the Fomu criteria:
1. Contemporary relevance
Everything we do is topical and relevant to modern society. We deliberately choose historical and contemporary subjects and projects that are interesting and relatable to a modern audience. We encourage reflection on societal issues and contribute to the prevailing social discourse.
2. Multivocality
We opt for subjects and projects that offer a multifaceted perspective on photographic imagery and the world. We also actively seek out and hold space for different views and perspectives and encourage the representation and involvement of creators from underrepresented communities and backgrounds.
3. Critical reflection on the medium and its evolution
Photography and reality have a multifaceted relationship. We are interested in the mechanisms of photography and deliberately work with photographers who critically engage with the medium or its history and are aware of artistic-conceptual positions and visual language.
4. Ethical position
Due to its complex relationship with reality, photography inevitably raises ethical questions. We are keenly aware of the context in which images emerge and exist. As a result, we always consider the intention and impact of images. We approach all images with the necessary caution and contextualise them within their historical context.
Fomu invited fellow Futures members to be part of the jury that would pick four artists from ten to join the Futures program. The jury consisted of Caroline von Courten & Simon Lovermann of Der Greif and Katalin Kopin & Emese Mucsi of Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center.
