Collaborating since 1995, Jennifer Allora (b. 1974) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b. 1971, Cuba) live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Through a research-oriented practice, Allora & Calzadilla address the intersections between the cultural, the historical and the geopolitical. Selected recent solo exhibitions were held in Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, Portugal, (2023); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, (2022); The Menil Collection, Houston, TX, USA (2020); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, USA (2019); Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain (2019); Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain (2018); MAXXI, Rome, Italy (2018). They have participated in Venice, Gwangju, Ljubljana, Mercosul and Istanbul biennales among others.

Mercedes Azpilicueta (b. 1981, La Plata, Argentina) is based in Amsterdam. Inspired by speculative and fictional Latino literature and Neo-Baroque art history, her practice gathers characters from the past and the present who, in fluid, associative connections counter rigid narratives of history in an attempt to make room for the affective and dissident voices to emerge. She was in residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam in 2015-16, and received the Pernod Ricard Fellowship in 2017. Solo exhibitions include Kunstverein Göttingen (2023); Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf (2022); Gasworks, London (2021), CAC Brétigny, Brétigny-sur-Orge (2021); Museion, Bolzano/Bozen (2020); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2019); CentroCentro, Madrid (2019); and MAMBA, Buenos Aires (2018). Azpilicueta was nominated for the Prix de Rome 2021.

Words are central to the murals, textile works and publications of Annabelle Binnerts (1995), both as a subject and a material. She understands them as shapeshifters that can be bent, formed and shaped, much like a sculptor works her clay. Her work envelops reader-viewers within language, and beckons them to step through a door, into an elsewhere hidden behind written words, where the boundaries that separate the world into distinct entities become porous and open to interpretation. Annabelle is presently based in Utrecht and Amsterdam, where she is a participant at De Ateliers.

Cansu Çakar (b. 1988, Istanbul, Turkey) based in Izmir. Her work is about blending traditional art forms, such as illumination design and miniature painting, with contemporary art practices and topics. By doing so, she challenges the stereotypical classification of traditional expressions and highlights her desire to set them free. In her practice, she delves into male-dominated subjects through her unique personal investigation and storytelling, which typically center on social, historical, and architectural topics. Among her projects and exhibitions are Hat ve Hata, artSümer, Istanbul (2023); NATURE AND STATE, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden (2022); Fore-Edge Painting, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Roma e Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome (2021); 6th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, The Optical and Mechanical Plant, Yekaterinburg (2021); 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, The Crack Begins Within, KW, (Berlin, 2020); Miniature 2.0, Pera Museum, Istanbul (2020); Replica of the Origin, SALT Beyoğlu, Istanbul (2019); Linear Transcendency, Lab-Darat al Funun, Amman (2016); SALT WATER: A Theory of Thought Forms. 14th Istanbul Biennial- 100°- FLO, Istanbul (2015).

Alev Ersan (b.1980, Istanbul, Turkey) is an artist, writer, and translator. Her practice ranges from installations incorporating audio/visual/textual content and site- responsive performances to stop-motion animation and poetry. Alev works with narrative and translation as tools/materials as well as modes of thinking through the porous relations between language, memory, and desire within private and public realms. Recent solo and collaborative work include If In Mirrors, It Doesn’t Bite, Kurtuluş Greek School, Istanbul (2022); mâzîk, DEPO Istanbul (2022); Frisson, Through the Window Project (2021). Recent published work includes Radiant Absence, Monograph for Füsun Onur, Istanbul/Milano (2022); Bazı Gözenekler Açılır, MOERO 3 (2021); Wagging Tongues, AAP, Istanbul (2020).

setareh fatehi is a researcher-artist based in Tehran and Amsterdam working with formation of trans-local collaborative spaces in between distanced localities as well as exploring the (hi-)stories of imaging and imagining within the contemporary and archaic body practices. In a dialogue with Milan Vukašinović and Nilufer Şaşmazer, setareh has initiated the invitation for Su Mi Jang, Olivia Reschofsky, Katerina Bakatsaki, Pau(la) Chaves Bonilla, Aylar Dastgiri, Shahrzad Irannejad and Ogutu Muraya to tell the story of one to the other, through dance, painting and words in and around their birth-places. Their story travelled from Ui-dong to Crete to Ebes to Amsterdam to Tehran and to Malindi. (i) your story of me is a world made by all those artists and thinkers. To read more about them see here.

Fikos is a painter and muralist born in Athens. At the age of 13, he started studying Byzantine painting in the Eikonourgia Association. He combines his traditional artistic style with contemporary thematics, techniques, and art movements, and he is the “godfather” of “Contemporary Byzantine Painting”, a term and artistic style that is now being used by many artists around the world. He has presented his work in solo and group shows in institutes such as Benaki Museum (Athens), Archaeological Museum of Milos, Fiminco Foundation (Paris), and the 1st Biennale of Larnaka (Cyprus), and he has painted many murals all over the world. Among them is the largest mural in the history of Greek-Byzantine art (46m high), commissioned murals for the municipality of Versailles, and indoor murals at ETH Zurich University. His focus is on how traditional arts can revive and serve contemporary society.

 Dejan Kaludjerović (Belgrade, Yugoslavia) is based in Vienna. Kaludjerović explores the conjunction between consumerism and childhood, analysing identity formation and stability of representational forms. His work is mainly concerned with issues of responsibility and manipulation, and the ways mass media, educational systems or family contexts influence society. Solo exhibitions and projects include Conversations WMW, Weltmuseum Wien, Vienna (2017); Conversations: Ljubljana, Tobačna001- Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana, Ljubljana (2019); Conversations: I don’t know that word... yet, – Opera Performance-, Steirischer Herbst ‘21, Graz (2021) and I Don’t Know That Word... Yet, Cultural Center of Belgrade (2022). Group shows include Whitechapel London (2023); Bucharest Biennale 10 (2022); 6th Athens Biennale (2017); Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (2015) and the 55th International October Salon, Belgrade (2014).

Lucie Kamuswekera (b. 1944) is an artist from eastern Congo. In her art, she embroiders images from her country’s past and present them on jute bags. As a child, Lucie Kamuswekera learnt embroidery in the colonial school system from Italian sisters. As a teenager and young woman, she experienced the latter days of the Belgian colonial yoke and the turbulent period of Congolese independence. The upheavals in the region in the 1990s profoundly changed her life. The start of the first Congo war in 1996 marked the beginning of years of violence and armed conflict in eastern Congo, the region where Lucie Kamuswekera grew up and lives. These events also marked her life in a traumatic way. In 1997, on his way to his field, Lucie’s husband was killed. Like many before and after her, Lucie was forced to flee and settled as a widow in the city of Goma. There she started embroidery again, as a means of meeting her material needs and expressing herself in relation to her country’s troubled past.

Lika Tarkhan-Mouravi Lika Tarkhan-Mouravi is a Georgian interdisciplinary artist based in London. Lika is currently undertaking a PhD at the Royal College of Art funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her research focuses on translation, immigrant identity and marginalised texts. She is a recipient of 2020 Open Space Curatorial Residency in Istanbul. Previous exhibitions include On The Other Side of The Hill, E.A. Shared Space, Tbilisi (2022); Poetry Festival: Long Song for Summer, Camden Arts Centre, London (2023); Unruly Encounters, Southwark Park Galleries, London (2021).

Stephanie Misa (PHL/ USA) is a visual artist and researcher whose work centers around decolonizing methodologies. She consistently follows her interest in complex and diverse histories through her various multimedia installations and performances. Her artistic practice connects multicultural collaboration, curating and feminist criticism. In her doctoral research, Misa examines phenomena pertaining to orality and the richness of multilingualism. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2012. She has a masters from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU and is a doctoral candidate at the University of Arts Helsinki. Misa currently teaches at the department of Artistic Strategies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her recent projects include solo shows at the Kunstraum Lakeside (2023), RMIT Gallery Melbourne (2023), KODA House on Governor’s Island, NYC (2022), participation in the 9th Bucharest Biennale (2020/21), and the current Mai Ling Not your Ornament exhibit at the Vienna Secession (2023). Misa was awarded the Art Foundation Merita Prize for Artistic Research in 2021. She lives and works in Vienna, Austria. 

Rehan Miskci (b. 1986, Istanbul) is an Istanbul/New York-based visual artist working with photography and installation. She explores notions of absence and displacement through photographic archives and examines how these archives are recontextualized while juxtaposing personal and collective memory. Her work has been exhibited in venues including Odunpazarı Modern Museum, Eskişehir (2022); Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (2021); Transmitter Gallery, New York (2018); Kasa Gallery, Istanbul (2017); Fridman Gallery, New York (2015). She is the first place winner of Baxter Street Camera Club of New York’s Annual Competition (2015). Miskci is the recipient of the Bronx Museum’s AIM Fellowship (2019), NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts) Fellowship in Photography (2019). She has completed artist residencies at Fondation Boghossian, Brussels (2023); Cité des Arts, Paris (2019); Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine (2019). 

Elsa Sahal (b. 1975, Paris) is a Paris-based sculptor known for her ceramic works evoking organic forms that disrupt the representation of gender and sexuality through the enigma of morphology. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and residencies; she has taught at the ENSAV National School of Architecture in Versailles, the École des arts décoratifs in Strasbourg and Alfred University New York State College of Ceramic. Elsa Sahal has also had numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including at the Museum of Art and Design, New York (2013); the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC (2018); the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (2016); and the Monnaie de Paris (2017). These works are now part of the public collections of the Cnap (2009, 2020); the FMAC (2017) and the FracNormandie Caen (2021).

Walid Siti (b. 1954, Duhok, Kurdistan-Iraq) is based in London. His works traverse a complex terrain of memory and loss, while at the same time offering an acute insight into a world, which for him has been a place of constant change. He uses ready-made objects associated with his cultural heritage and the state of current politics, transforming them into shapes that evoke a set of metaphors and connotations that address the ongoing changes in the Middle East. Exhibition and projects include: the Venice Biennale (2011 and 2015); Systems and Patterns, International Centre of Graphics, Ljubljana, Slovenia (2012); Tamawuj, 13th Sharjah Biennale, UAE, (2017); Baghdad Mon Amour, Institute of Cultures of Islam, Paris, France (2018); Pay Attention Please! Public Art Amsterdam, Netherlands (2018); Public Art, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, RAMM, Exeter, UK (2021); Public art Commission, Tobacco Factory, Bristol, UK (2021); The Future of Traditions, Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London (2023).