Iveta Gabalina

Ornella Mari is a Belgian-born, Hungarian-Italian photographer based in Budapest. Her work explores themes of identity, femininity, and self-perception, often delving into the emotional and psychological landscapes of her subjects. Through a nuanced approach to portraiture, she captures the complexities of human experience, from moments of vulnerability to personal transformation. Mari’s journey with photography began as a means of self-exploration, gradually evolving into a broader investigation of societal expectations and internal struggles. Her images balance intimacy with universality, inviting viewers to reflect on themes of self-acceptance, resilience, and the fluid nature of identity. Rooted in both conceptual and documentary influences, Mari’s photography serves as a visual dialogue between the external world and inner realities. Whether through staged compositions or candid moments, her work seeks to challenge perceptions and offer new ways of seeing oneself and others.

Emilia Martin is a Polish artist and photographer based in The Hague, Netherlands, where in 2022 she graduated from Photography & Society Masters at the Royal Academy of the Art. Working with photography, writing, and sound, she explores how the stories we tell shape the realities we inhabit. She investigates mythologies and tales, and how they fluctuate and shift throughout histories. Through her work, she aims to complicate the binary understandings of fiction and truth and their established aesthetics. Her process is based on careful research and personal, often playful approaches, through which she questions dominant narratives. The belief in storytelling is rooted in her upbringing, where she engaged with both rural mythologies and urban narratives. She grew up between two different realities: a remote farm belonging to her grandmother in rural Eastern Poland and a heavy industry coal mining urban region in the West of the country. The clash between these two realities, the narrative of extractivism against rural mythologies and the proximity of nature, formed a place that continues to ground her artistic practice. Her work is inspired and informed by her rural Polish ancestry and intersectional feminist approaches.

Michal Sita (1985) is a photographer and curator. Graduate of photography at the ITF in Opava and anthropology at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, where he is concluding doctoral research on social uses of the past in contemporary Poland. Interested in social memory and research strategies of photography. Curator of an interdisciplinary analysis of Wiesław Rakowski’s interwar zoological photographs, curator and producer of a series of exhibitions (including Małgorzata Lebda and Rafał Siderski, Mayumi Suzuki, Jan Kurek, Martin Parr and Rimaldas Vikšraitis, Sputnik Photos, among others), and photobook festivals. Co-author of “Củ Chi Tunnels Restoration Report” (Photographic Publication of the Year 2020 – Łódź, PL), a book relating to the activities of the Polish-Vietnamese architectural heritage conservation mission. Author of “History of Poland” vol. 1 and 2 — publications commenting on anthropological research carried out in Murowana Goślina among volunteers staging a large-scale historical pageant. Author of critical texts on photography. Lecturer at the Magdalena Abakanowicz University of Arts in Poznań.

Rosa Lacavalla (b. 1993) is an Italian photographer and visual artist based in Bologna. She holds a BA in Art Graphic and an MA in Photography from the Academy of Fine Arts Bologna, along with one-year studies in the BA in Photography program at Coventry University, UK, and an internship with the collective Cesura. Her work has been featured in several printed and online publications, and exhibited in festivals, collective and solo shows in Italy and abroad. Since 2023 she's been part of the PhMuseum's team as an Editorial, Production and Education Assistant. Lacavalla's visual narratives unfold as transformative journeys – whether it is a personal quest for emotional healing or an exploration of cultural intersections and migrations. Navigating the complexities of the human experience, her works invite viewers to reflect on the intricate paths of healing, transformation, and the blurred boundaries between reality and dream.‍

Laura Van Severen studied Fine Arts and Photography at KASK School of Arts in Ghent, (Belgium) where she obtained her MA in 2015. She develops photographic projects in which she explores the landscape —apparently static, still, distant— to address the relationship we have with it and the trace we leave upon it. She moves away from the immediacy of the medium and creates from stillness and reflection. This has resulted in projects such as Land, Strata or El camp d’elles in which she addresses topics such as the transformation and fragmentation of the landscape, global logistics, waste management in the EU or the condition of women in a rural environment. Under the title Listening–Gathering, she is currently creating a collection of stories in which sound impacts and materialises into concrete realities. Laura lives in Barcelona (Spain) where she also works as a freelance photographer, teacher and studio manager.

My name is Claude. As an interdisciplinary artist, I mainly use the media of photography and sound. I am based in Lichtensteig in Toggenburg, Switzerland. I grew up in the 90‘s in a small village on the Swiss side of Lake Constance and was socialised in the environment of the Catholic Church. Today, after studying analogue photography at Ostkreuzschule in Berlin and living in various house and farm projects, I no longer feel that I belong there.

However, the themes in my artistic practice today are still characterised by a tightly structured childhood, youth and apprenticeship: in my work, I have been exploring the concepts of collectivity and intimacy for several years. I am always looking for liberating and solidary acts in performative moments and arts production. My image- and sound-based practice reveals my great affinity for technology, the exploration of boundaries and needs in dialogue and the creation of trusting connections and learning spaces in my collaborations.

As a child of the working class, I am concerned with my own role as an artist in society and what (political) room for manoeuvre this opens up for me. The problem of self-exploitation, especially - but not only - with a body read as female, is a recurring theme in my artistic practice.

Since 2019, the Salon Vert has been a network of artists, a laboratory for sound research and a place for interdisciplinary dialogue. The Salon Vert has found a new home in my studio in Lichtensteig in 2023. I am also co-founder of the audiovisual Glitch Festival in St.Gallen and music editor at the community radio station Stadtfilter in Winterthur.

Viacheslav Poliakov is a visual artist, photographer, graphic designer. He was born in 1986 in Kherson, Ukraine. Obtained a master’s degree in art education from Kherson State University. Now based in Lviv, Ukraine. His art practice exists on the intersection of documentary photography and design. He's interested in objects and spaces made by people, the historic background behind the urban landscape. Viacheslav is a finalist of Foam Talents, Vienna Photobook Festival, Circulations, Krakow Photomonth Showoff, Fotofestival Lodz Grand Prix, Prix Levallois. His works were published in the Foam Magazine, The British Journal of Photography, GUP magazine, Lensculture, The Washington Post.

Bertrand Cavalier unfolds his artistic thinking across photography, sculpture, drawing, and video, each medium enriching the others. His work shifts from a politics of the gaze to a logic of sensation, where art becomes a bodily experience rather than mere representation. In this way, his work is part of a contemporaneity that echoes the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, offering a reflection on our ability to communicate and share ideas beyond words, through sensations that resonate with our bodies and our spaces. — Olivier Grasser Bertrand Cavalier has published with Fw:Books (NL, 2020) and Spector Books (DE, 2024). He is the laureate of the Prix Ville de Bruxelles – Centrale for Contemporary Art (BE, 2025) and has exhibited at FOMU Antwerp (BE), Photoforum Pasquart Biel (CH), BIP – Biennale de l’Image Possible, Liège (BE), and FRAC Orléans (FR). He received the Sébastien van der Straten Fund Award (2019) and was a resident at Artwell Amsterdam (NL, 2021) and Cité internationale des arts, Paris (FR, 2023). His work has been published in Artpress, Mouvement (both FR), Camera Austria (AT) and l’art même (BE).

Karol Szymkowiak (b. 1983) is a photographer, photobook artist, curator and educator based in Poznań, Poland. Self-taught photographer, specializing in documentary photography and photo collages - work with archives. His work revolves around themes such as environmental problems, military and civil defence, physical and mental immobilisation. He is constantly fascinated by finding surrealism in faithfully recording reality using photography. As a photographer, he has participated in over a dozen group exhibitions. Since 2015 he is art curator of a long-term photography documentary project The Września Collection (Kolekcja Wrzesińska) whose patron is the Mayor of the City and Municipality of Września. As part of his work on this project, he is collaborating with leading Polish photographers to create photobooks and exhibitions about his home town of Września. Karol is a member of The Association of Polish Art Photographers (ZPAF) and a scholarship recipient of the Marshal of the Wielkopolska Region in the field of culture. He is also a lecturer in photography at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

Parisa Aminolahi (Tehran, Iran), based in the Netherlands, is a freelance filmmaker and photographer. Her series are mostly long-term projects. And her work explores themes such as displacement, exile, homeland, family, and childhood memories, using old family photographs, self-portraits, and her own family members as subjects. Her mediums include photography, documentary filmmaking, animation, painting, and mixed media.She studied theatre stage design (BA) and animation (MA) at University of Art in Tehran and documentary filmmaking (MA) at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is a recipient of The Firecracker Photographic Grant, The Netherlands Film Fund, GUP New Dutch Photography Talent of the Year and One World Media Student Film Bursary. Her dummy book, Tehran Diary, was shortlisted for the MACK First Book Award, BUP Book Award, and PHmuseum Women Photographers Grant. She has held screenings and exhibitions locally and internationally and is represented by Ag Galerie.