Julia Klewaniec (1996) photographer and culture animator. A graduate of Photography in Film School in Łódź. She is a co-creator of the Picture Doc Foundation with a group of photographers (Duży Pokój Gallery) in Warsaw. Resident in the student section of the "W ramach Sopotu" festival in Poland (2022). Chosen by Fotofestiwal in Łódź for Futures Talents 2022. Talent of the Year 2022 in the Pix.House competition. Her debut project "Silent Racism" was presented among others in Warsaw, Opole, Łódź, Turin, Braga, Bochnia, Copenhagen. At the end of 2022, together with Pix.House and Krzysiek Orłowski, she published the zine "Silent Racism". She is interested in statements about contemporary society, life and relations between people, language and the environment.
http://klewaniec.pl/@klewaniec
Poly’s art practice is merging her previous experience in documentary and staged photography. The photographer interprets cultural and visual codes of typical Ukrainian everyday life, predominantly in the fields of eroticism, fashion, and novel notions of beauty. The artist states that she finds herself constantly inspired by “trivial things, everyday events, stories from the lives of friends, and own experience”.
Julie Poly’s exhibitions serve as a continuation to her artistic message. Her ‘mockumentarian’ and slightly grotesque projects often come back to the areas of their genesis, like railway station (Ukrzaliznytsia series) or arcade centres (Kosmolot playing cards).
Duchateau is an artist who mainly works with photography. By applying a wide variety of contemporary strategies. His photos are an investigation into representations of (seemingly) concrete ages. By studying sign processes, signification and communication, he makes work that generates diverse meanings, associations and meanings collide. Space becomes time and language becomes image.
His works are characterised by the use of everyday events in an atmosphere of middleclass mentality in which recognition plays an important role.
By taking daily life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of middle class values, he plays with the idea of the mortality of an artwork confronted with the power of a transitory appearance, which is, by being restricted in time, much more intense. His works question the conditions of appearance of an image in the context of contemporary visual culture in which images, representations and ideas normally function. He makes work that deals with the documentation of events and the question of how they can be presented.Lars Duchateau currently lives and works in Hasselt and Ghent.
Riccardo Svelto (Florence, 1989) is currently based in Florence, where he works as a professor and freelance photographer. Svelto is graduated from the BA Photography at LABA (Libera Accademia di Belle Arti) in Florence (2015).
He has been the winner of the FOLIO International Online Photobook Masterclass (2020) by PhMuseum & Witty Books. In 2021, Witty Books published his first photobook entitled La Cattedrale. His work has been selected for Giovane Fotografia Italiana GFI 2022, exhibition in Fotografia Europea Festival 2022. At the same time, his work is featured in printed and online publications like Ignant, i-D, Booooooom, VOSTOK magazine and others.
His work is mainly focused on the relationship between empathy and social dynamics, trying to understand the emotional interaction and mind shapes we all face at the different ages and circumstances of life.
Laure has exhibited her work internationally in Berlin (DE), Reykjavik (IS), Brussels (BE), Paris (FR), and soon in Stockholm (SE), Luxembourg (LU), and Osaka (JP). Her work has entered the collection of several foundations, such as the Fondation des Arts du Luxembourg and the Palais de Liège (BE).
Peters Jurgis (b. 1991) is a new media artist currently based in Riga, Latvia. He holds both a BSc in Digital Media Technology and an MSc in Cyber Security from the University of Birmingham, and an MA in Audiovisual Arts from the Art Academy of Latvia. His work comprises visual explorations into the impact of various phenomena caused by advances in technology. As such, a main focus of his work is Artificial Intelligence (AI) – both as a medium and on a conceptual basis. New developments in AI have sparked a series of heated debates, ranging from whether we can entrust critical tasks to AI, to conversations on the role of the human creator in an age of AI-generated content. With a background in machine learning algorithms, Jurgis believes that the future will bring AI and human co-creation – where algorithms are used to enhance a human artist’s capabilities. In his own practice, Jurgis applies new technologies as tools for visual storytelling, and as a means to speculate on future scenarios.
Aurélie Scouarnec created her series, Anaon, in the monts d’Arrée, in the Finistère region of Brittany. It is a delicate exploration on what she calls “the margins of the visible” in this legendary land. Inspired by the texts of Anatole Le Braz and François-Marie Luzel, she undertook a photographic investigation, in search of the rites and ancient tales amongst this rocky mountain range. Gateway to hell, according to some beliefs, here she crosses the phantom presence of several animals, called psychopomps, in charge of escorting souls in the kingdom of the dead. In other places, she plays with the syncretism particular to this hilly land and combines in a single stroke veiled female silhouettes – immediately associated with Christianity – and monumental woodland silhouettes, places of pagan worship. The abyssal green of moss and the deep black of the night are at times awoken by the cry of the moon and the animals perhaps surprised by the movement of these heavy fabrics. Stories read, heard, relics of ancient rites and forms of contemporary druidism, all are invited here to take their place in this phantasmagoric narrative which Aurélie Scouarnec constructs, photograph after photograph.
Ksenia Kuleshova is a photojournalist and visual artist. She has been featured in the British Journal of Photography as one of thirty-one women to watch (2018), as one of twenty rising women photojournalists by Artsy (2019), and as one of The 30: New and Emerging Photographers to Watch (2022). Her work has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, Wall Street Journal, DIE ZEIT, and De Standaard. Ksenia’s first book “Ordinary People” was published by The New Press (New York) in December 2023.
Irene Fenara (b.1990) is an Italian artist. Her research focuses on the way of seeing and practicing observation on images. She reflects on linguistic devices and she use optical and electronic instruments of various kinds, from Polaroid to surveillance cameras, often in an improper manner and transgressing their basic function. It becomes an instrument for observing the world, in the search for a slight poetic sense. The act of vision is the central element of her work that declines in her latest research on optical devices, often used as instruments of control, bringing attention to the always reversible overturning between who observes and who is observed. Her work has been exhibited in art galleries and public institutions, such as Fondazione Prada Osservatorio (2016), Fondazione Fotografia Modena (2017), P420 (2017), MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna (2018), Palazzo delle Esposizioni (2018), Fondazione Francesco Fabbri (2018) e Kunst Merano Arte (2019). She is one of the fifth finalists in ING Unseen Talent Award 2019.
https://www.irenefenara.com/
His pictures appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, British Journal of Photography, Internazionale, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times Weekend, Vogue and Vice.
He participated in several exhibitions, including at United Nations (Geneva, Switzerland, 2013) at Venice Biennale of Architecture (Venice, Italy, 2016) and Head On Photo Festival (Sidney, Australia, 2020).
In 2019 he published “Era Mare”, a book about the high water in Venice, whose proceeds went totally to the shopkeepers who needed help.
For his work about Covid-19 Matteo won the REFOCUS award by Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities (Italy) and according to ARTRIBUNE he’s the Best Italian young photographer of 2020.
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.
For her photographic adventure I am just a scenic spot, Pauline Niks made two long journeys to China, travelling the entire country to photograph so-called landmarks. Her particular focus was on replicas of iconic tourist attractions from other countries, such as the Eiffel Tower and the White House. The idea behind the undertaking was the manipulative nature of documentary photography: it is often seen as a reliable reproduction of reality when in fact it creates its own reality.
www.paulineniks.com
She is a student of the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava (the Czech Republic), winner of the PDN Emerging Photographer, last year's laureate of the Konrad Pustoła's Remembrance Scholarship, winner of the Sputnik Photos Project titled "As you can see". Her works have been published e.g. in The Calvert Journal, Culture.pl, FK magazine.
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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.
Gonçalo C. Silva (b. 1997) lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal. He has studied at both the Faculty of Fine-Arts in Lisbon and at Atelier de Lisboa, and is currently pursuing an MA at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities from NOVA University of Lisbon. In his work, which applies an artistic approach to photography, Silva addresses themes related to the representation of the landscape, and to the relationship between humans and nature. In his projects, the interconnection of images from different contexts creates new meanings and narratives with a strong symbolic character, related to the artist’s personal experiences.
Today she lives and works as a photographer in Athens. Her work has been published in magazines from Greece and abroad, and presented in photography group exhibitions.
Xenia Petrovska (b. 1988) is a photographer based in Kyiv, Ukraine. She studied at the MYPH art school and at the Kyiv School of Photography. Xenia's works are rooted in the mysterious and even slightly surreal atmospheres created by light and color. She took part in numerous group exhibitions in Ukraine in Europe. Xenia was selected as a Fresh Eyes European talent 2021 by GUP Magazine. Member of Ukrainian Women Photographers Organisation.
Patricia Morosan studied photography at the Ostkreuzschule in Berlin. In her visual poetic work, she negotiates the duality of intimacy and identity. Represented by Galerie Franzkowiak in Berlin, her work has been exhibited internationally, among which at Les Rencontres de la Photographie d‘Arles Voies Off, Fotohaus Paris-Berlin; Les Boutographies, Pavillion Populaire Montpellier; at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bucharest; Haus am Kleistpark, Berlin; ICR Gallery Lisabon; Kommunale Gallery Berlin; Metamatic TAF, TV Control Center (KET), Athens; Atelier Varan, Paris; at 12-14 contemporary/FotoWien, Vienna; the Noorderlicht International Festival, Netherlands and at the Foto Forum, Bolzano. 2019 she won the Jury Award from Les Boutographies, Montpellier; and the Courage Prize of the Association of Women Journalists in Germany. She was nominated for the Art Prize of the Haus am Kleistpark in Berlin (2019), for the Wellcome Photography Award (2020), the Documentary Prize Wüstenrot (2020), Gomma Grant (2021), BUP Award (2022). She received various grants from: Initial Stipend from the Academy of Arts Berlin (2021) and various grant from the Berlin Senate for Culture and Europe. Her work is part of public collections, as the MNAC collection in Bucharest and the Ville of Montpellier, France and in several private collections in Europe.www.patriciamorosan.com