The artists nominated by
The Triennial of Photography Hamburg has taken place every three years since 1999 in collaboration with Hamburg’s major museums, exhibition houses, cultural institutions, galleries and other organisers. In this time, the Triennial has become an important photography event in Germany and internationally. With a large number of exhibitions organised under a common theme, it highlights current topics in photography.
The 8th edition of the Triennial of Photography Hamburg will open on 19 May 2022. Based on the theme of Currency, artistic director Koyo Kouoh and her team of international curators, that includes Rasha Salti, Gabriella Beckhurst Feijoo, Oluremi C. Onabanjo and Cale Garrido, will explore how our “retinal era” leads us to perceive the world through image capture. Currency not only refers to money and its significance as an economic indicator, it is borrowed in this context to instigate a critical examination of photography. The 8th Triennial is accompanied by an international, interdisciplinary symposium in the run-up to the event and a festival lasting several days in the summer of 2022.
The curatorial team of the 8th Triennale has selected five emerging Futures artists in the field of photography who have particularly caught their eye:
What is Hien Hoang’s recipe? For me, it’s the mix of ingredients: Using still-life photography, surrealism and performance, she addresses clichés and prejudices about Asia. Her photos are bursting with exotic beauty, but a closer look reveals abysses that shake up ways of seeing and thinking. (nominated by Stephanie Bunk)
Engaging flows of history and social relation, Euridice Kala deploys the photographic image as a central means of meaning-making. Her artistic practice mines the fraught memories of the Atlantic slave trade and colonial-era Mozambique through the form of installations, performances, and publications. She is invested in the capacity of the archive to generate conceptual possibilities, and pursues these avenues from a Black feminist African perspective. (nominated by Oluremi C. Onabanjo)
Marco Kesseler is a UK-based British photographer with an interest in portrai- ture and the social stories of food security and agricultural infrastructures. Kesseler has a profoundly tender presence as a photographer. From his quiet portraits of daily life in Belarus in the run up the 2015 presidential election to his recent series on the role of seasonal work in the UK largely fulfilled by migrant workers whose labour is likely to be unprotected by Brexit legislation, the quiet resolve of Kesseler’s photographs resist dominant narratives of place, nationhood and nativist independence. (nominated by Gabriella Beckhurst)
Johanna Terhechte is exceptionally curious about the world and driven to undertake challenges. She is a thoughtful artist and a compassionate human being, two underrated character traits in artists. (nominated by Rasha Salti)
Laura Van Severen is a Belgian photographer based between Barcelona and Ghent. She is a promising talent who has, in her latest projects, taken a thorough look at the transformation of landscape and environment. Strata (2020) is an investigation of the effect of landfill and waste management, having traveled to Spain, Belgium, Romania, Portugal and the Netherlands. In this series, Laura maps a representative selection of altered ecosystems that are the pure consequence of our abusive system of consumption. With aesthetic sensibility, she blends artistic and journalistic approaches, pointing at harsh realities of our times with poetic means. With this nomination, I’d like to reinforce her courage working on complex, research-based photographic projects, as well as supporting her persistent aspiration to reconnect us with nature and with each other through diverse exhibition formats. (nominated by Cale Garrido)
Hien Hoang was born in Quang Ninh, Vietnam and currently lives in Hamburg, Germany.
She graduated from the Rheinmain University of Applied Sciences in Wiesbaden with a bachelor’s degree in communication design with a focus on photography. She is currently working on various projects and completing a master’s degree in photography at the University of Applied Sciences (HAW) in Hamburg.
Hien is interested in identity, clichés and symbols. She has investigated these topics in various projects and in different ways. She experiments with arrangement, staging and installation in order to place ordinary objects and scenes in a new context and thus symbolically recharge them.
Johanna Terhechte lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. She works across media with photography, video and sculpture.
The starting point for her work are images, both her own as well as found material. Her project 'you give it an order' questions the orientation mechanisms that apply when looking at a picture in terms of its content and form.
Marco Kesseler is a British photographer with interest in portraits, food and contemporary social stories.
"My interest lies in the role of narrative as a reference point in representing contemporary social issues. I work between editorial assignments and long-term projects, taking pride in immersing myself within the place and people that I photograph, working with communities over an extended period of time."
Past works have documented the socio-political effects of the Ukrainian revolution; explored notions of escapism along The English Riviera; living in hiding with Albanian families persecuted in the age old traditions of blood feuds, as well as celebratory traditions in Greece. Previously exhibited works have been included in The Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize, PhotoIreland Festival, Paris Photo, Magenta Flash Forward and The Renaissance Photography Prize and clients include The FT Weekend Magazine, The New York Times, TIME and National Geographic.
Born in Maputo, Euridice Zaituna Kala (1987) is an artist based in Paris. She was trained as a photographer at the Market Photo Workshop, Johannesburg.
Recent monographic exhibition includes: Untitled, ADN_ Sea(e)scapes, 2021 at galerie Salon H, Paris, and I, the Archive,2020, at Villa Vassilieff, Paris. Kala’s most recent group exhibitions include: This is Not Africa, unlearn what you have learned, 2021 at Aros Museum, Denmark, Un.e air.e de famille, 2021, at Museum Paul Elourd, Saint-Denis, France, Polyphony, 2021 at Gera Museum, Gera, Germany. Kala’s most recent performances include: Stranger, Danger, Wait it’s a Prayer Room, Centre Pompidou, 2019, Mackandal Turns into a Butterfly: A Love potion (2018), Le Pouvoir du Dedans, La galerie Cac de Noisy-le-Sec (2018), Euridice Zaituna Kala Shows and Doesn’t Tell, galerie Saint-Severin (2018). She is the winner of the ADAGP/ Villa Vassilieff Fellowship 2019-2020, a finalist of the SAM art Prix (2018) and also a finalist for the prize for contemporary talent, François Schneider Foundation (2018). Kala’s work will be included in the 5th Casablanca Biennial, Morroco, and she an artist in residency at Urbane Kuenst Ruhr in Germany in 2019-2020. She is the founder and co-organiser of e.a.s.t. (Ephemeral Archival Station), a lab and platform for long-term artistic research projects, established in 2017.
