Ba Taonga Julia Kaunda-Kaseka

Ba Taonga Julia Kaunda-Kaseka is a multidisciplinary curator, mentor and designer of social spaces living in Lusaka, Zambia. Her work includes concert and exhibition producing, arts administration, curating, teaching and advocacy in Zambia and the wider region. As the founder of Modzi Arts, she has worked with numerous prominent cultural institutions in South and West Africa. Through the organisation, she advocates for the value of art and cultural understanding via an approach rooted in the Zambian philosophy of Ulemu: respect and regard. The spaces she creates bring artists and art audiences together, in quest of new, alternative ways of engaging with ancient objects and traditions within contemporary art. 

Huzefah Haroon

Huzefah Haroon is an architect currently living in Karachi, Pakistan. She founded her practice, Anomaly Lab, as a means to understand the meaning behind making by hand and the importance of material exploration and craftsmanship within design. Her ongoing creative quest is to create experiences that are sensitively attuned to human and ecological being. Her current work researches the practices of Jugaad* within the South Asian region, asking how it can help us design with less. Her recent installation “Jugaar Gym” at the Lahore Design Summit 01 held in Lahore, Pakistan, was an exploration of creating spatial play through borrowed architectural elements and crafts.

Earlier this year, her practice completed their winning design for the international design-build competition Project Lari 2.0, organised by Chaal Chaal Agency, India, making a street cart for women in Ahmedabad, India.

Huzefah is currently an assistant professor at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. She co-authored a research paper titled, Inducing Eureka, presented at the Aga Khan University – Institute of Educational Development (AKU-IED), Karachi, Pakistan. 

* Source: Oxford Dictionary. Jugaad/Jugaar is a hindi/urdu word used to describe “a flexible approach to problem-solving that uses limited resources in an innovative way.”*

Video: Jugaar Gym installation by Anomaly Lab at the Lahore Design Summit 01, located at Sabeel Courtyard, Delhi Gate, Walled City of Lahore, Pakistan, the exhibition was held between 07th - 13th March 2024. Design Team: Asadullah, Huzefah Haroon, Sara Bhaty

Tinsae Tsegahun Mengistu

Tinsae Tsegahun Mengistu is an architect born and raised in Addis Ababa. She blends her passion for sustainable design, architecture, and a vibrant engagement with the arts.

A graduate of Addis Ababa University with a Bachelor's degree in Architecture, she continued her academic journey with a postgraduate focus on 3D printing architecture at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, emphasizing the use of Earth as a sustainable building material. Tinsae's commitment to environmental consciousness is further evident through her participation in the 2023's BASEhabitat International Summer School at the University of Arts Linz. Here, she delved into the intricacies of adobe + earth blocks, rammed earth, earth + fibre, and bamboo construction—exploring applications ranging from simple construction methods to larger scale applications in contemporary architecture.

Her focus extends beyond architectural innovation; Tinsae aims to research and utilize these materials within the context of Ethiopia's social architecture. By integrating organic elements into architectural designs, she strives to create spaces that not only reflect cultural heritage but also address the social needs of communities, fostering environments that promote well-being and inclusivity. Tinsae envisions contributing to Ethiopia's architectural landscape, addressing urgent needs in disaster resilience and sustainable development through innovative and eco-friendly designs.

Image 1: Tinsae’s Final year project on Transitional Disaster Relief Shelter in Somali, Ethiopia.

Image 2: 3D visualization showcasing final year project on Transitional Disaster Relief Shelter in Somali, Ethiopia.

Image 3: IAAC's 3D Printed  Earth Student  Housing Vision project featuring Marina Nassif, Tinsae Tsegahun Mengistu, Milad Mehdizadeh, and Huanyu Li.

Jon Haga Grov

Jon Haga Grov is an architect who studied at the Aarhus School of Architecture (2022). He takes a phenomenological approach to architecture, with a particular interest in tectonics and materiality, often expressed through studies and investigations of vernacular building traditions. Contextualised architecture that interacts with local surroundings and premises are important factors in his work. Within today's complex societal challenges, this can be expressed through use of waste materials, recycling and planning for extended lifespan in our built environment. His working methodology often involves physical experimentation and testing in a 1:1 scale, as well as trying to shorten the path between drawing and construction.

Jon has been interested in how people in his region for centuries have built in harsh climates and with limited resources, leading to distinct structures rooted in local traditions. He believes that now, perhaps more than ever, it is important that we build with and not against our surroundings, adapting to our local climates and using local resources in intelligent ways.

Coming to Indonesia, Jon is interested in practicing architecture as a universal language capable of adapting to and learning from new building cultures and traditions in collaboration with other architects, artists and craftsmen. 

Image 1: Column Pine Bricks

Image 2: Offcuts Pine Bricks

Image 3: Stool

Image 4: Model Wooden workshop

Elise Hoebeke

Elise Hoebeke is a contemporary jewellery artist who holds a BA and Master in Visual Arts – Jewellery Context from Sint Lucas Antwerp, where she currently teaches on the BA of Jewellery Design and Silversmithing programme.

Before finding her way into contemporary jewellery, Elise obtained a BA of Interior Design at LUCA School of Arts Gent (BE). As a jewellery artist she is interested in a world where space, object and jewellery come together.

Image 1:1.     Baguette or Brick?, 2022, Print

Image 2: 1.     Transmutation d’une brique: quatrième phase - installation, 2022, Brick (cutting, filing, sanding), 180 x 85 x 50 mm

Image 3: 1.     Transmutation d’une brique: troisième phase précieuse, 2022. Collaboration with Studio DO Red gemstone (cutting, filing, sanding), 180 x 85 x 50 mm

Image 4: 1.     Left: Duplicate, 2023. Rock-crystal, cut into new shape,125x36x30mm, Right: Brick mould: bottom and top, 2023. Steel moulds with Delft clay, 220x110x30mm

Yohanes Arya Duta

Yohanes Arya Duta is a trained industrial designer and independent researcher. He is an active contributor to community development projects in a number of rural areas of Indonesia. Arya’s design work is inspired by his research into local crafts traditions and implemented through many creative outlets and collaborative works. He designed a tableware set to present Indonesian craftsmanship through food diplomacy for the 2022 G20 sumit held in Bali, Indonesia.

Arya’s research into the material-culture of rattan in Jagoi Babang West Borneo was displayed at Borneo Cultures Museum Kuching, Malaysia. Currently, he is continuing his research archiving endangered rattan material species in relation to the practical knowledge of the Dayak Bidayuh tribe to conserve the community’s land tenure. Data from this research will be preserved at the British Museum open access repository under creative common license.

Breanne Johnson

Breanne Johnson is an artist and designer from the United States and Curaçao, who currently lives and works in Mexico City. She received her MFA in 3D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2023, and a BFA in Visual Art and Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2017. She was the recipient of the Pophouse Design Fellowship in 2022, has been an artist in residence at Haystack Open Studio Residency and Chop Wood Carry Water Residency, attended Ox-Bow School of Art, and is currently working as a fabricator and studio assistant for Taller Matos, while also conducting her own place-based contextual research.

Breanne’s work centers around social furniture, objects and design infrastructures that aid or facilitate lo-fi avenues of social connection. Her projects range from a café in the back of her pickup truck to apartment bars to a kitchen in a suitcase, alongside ritualized furniture items. She uses the tools and visual language of architecture and design to create artworks that try to reckon with and respond to dominant cultural or interpersonal assumptions and ways of living.

Image 1: Trailer Lab. Photo: PD Rearick.

Image 2: Variable Shade Structure

Image 3: Pickup Café

Image 4: Suitcase Kitchen

Francisco Susmel

Francisco Susmel studied architecture at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He holds masters degree in Urban Economics. Francisco has almost 20 years of experience in community organising and project management in non-profit organisations, addressing challenges that affect vulnerable communities, disaster response, housing, land tenure and infrastructure. He has worked in Latin America and Africa, and since 2017, in Puerto Rico where he moved to lead an emergency housing project after hurricane Maria. Since 2018, he has been involved with La Maraña, a local non-profit focused on participatory design to improve and create the shared spaces communities imagine for themselves.

Ellie Birkhead

Ellie Birkhead is a designer, maker and facilitator living in Cornwall, England. Ellie uses the power of craft and creativity to bring about social change and to highlight often unseen or underappreciated connections surrounding skillfully made objects of use. She is passionate about learning and passing on hand skills to build confidence and a deeper understanding and appreciation for natural materials and crafted objects.

Ellie holds an MA in Social Design from the Design Academy Eindhoven and a BA in Design and Craft from the University of Brighton. Ellie’s MA project Building the Local examines the threat that globalisation poses to small-scale industry. The project considers local manufacturing to be an essential part of cultural identity and sense of place, and explores the values - aesthetic, social, ecological and financial - embedded in crafts-based industries and their interrelationships. These themes are manifested in the craft of brickmaking, one of the casualties of deindustrialisation in the Ellie’s home region of the Chiltern Hills, England. 

Ellie has crafted connections over the past decade in the world of making from grassroots creativity through to the luxury craft sector. She has worked for renowned furniture maker Gareth Neal, the artist and inventor Dominic Wilcox, designers Studio Glithero and the Heritage Crafts Association.

Images by Max Presky for Ellie’s project Building the local.

Henrik Follesø Egeland

Henrik Follesø Egeland (1994) is an Oslo-based visual artist and photographer, and a graduate from the Oslo National Academy of Arts (MFA) as well as the University of Roehampton (BFA). Through a technical engagement with photography, his work operates both within and outside traditional photographic representation. Exploring alternative means of photographic recording and reproduction, as well as possibilities of transmutation. This technical experimentation is used as an investigative approach, to explore ideas of landscape, memory and perceptions of reality. Pulling together webs of interconnected yet disparate ideas and notions, into new constellations.

Image 1–2: Meridian Current, 2021–2022
Courtesy of the artist

Image 3–4: Oblique Fields, 2019–2021
Courtesy of the artist

Image 5: Sheep grace, 2019–2021
Courtesy of the artist

Tris Vonna-Michell

Tris Vonna-Michell works in various media and is based in Oslo and Stockholm. He is currently a professor of contemporary art at the Art Academy, KHiO, Oslo. Vonna-Michell has exhibited widely in museums, biennales and galleries, such as Serralves Museum, Porto, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Tate Modern, London, and Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, and most recently at Jan Mot in Brussels. Vonna-Michell’s work utilises a plethora of technical devices, modes of presentation and installational approaches, encompassing performance, audio recordings, slide projections, poetry, sound poetry, printed matter, photography and film.

Image 1-5: Tris Vonna-Michell Boxed Matter, 2022
Courtesy of the artist and Jan Mot, Brussels

Alex Brown

Alex Brown (1986) is an artist and larp designer from England living in Oslo. He is interested in self-organised structures of co-design and collective action; using them to confront everyday realities in the attempt to collectively build new ones. His work often takes the form of movement-based and sensory non-verbal larps, as well as experiences which address the crises of our time, specifically climate breakdown and building new political and social structures from the embers of capitalism. His larps have been run at festivals in England, Denmark and Norway including at Blackbox CPH, Grenselandet, The Smoke, and Now Play This. He organises a free monthly larp event in Blackbox Deichman, Oslo.

Image 1: Transmigration of Souls, 2022. Photo by Jost L. Hansen, Blackbox CPH

Image 2: Transmigration of Souls, 2022. Photo by Jost L. Hansen, Blackbox CPH

Image 3: Spillover, 2023.

Image 4: Other Minds, 2023. Co-designed with Nina Runa Essendrop

Natalie Seifert Eliassen

Natalie Seifert Eliassen is a multidisciplinary artist from Norway, working with performance, video, sculpture, costume and installation. Through research and interviews her artistic practice addresses topics including sexuality, consent, nudity, intimacy, clitoris awareness and trans-inclusive feminism. With a professional background in dance and theater, Seifert’s immersive installations and sculptures are often re-applied as set-design or costumes for performances.

Seifert holds a BFA from Bergen Academy of Fine Art and an MFA from Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts, Time and Space department.

Click here to visit her website

Image 1: Natalie Seifert Eliassen performs the Clitoris Dance in the Clitoris Costume at Nyt Festivalen 2020. Photo: Marco Zimberlin

Image 2: Alginate body moulds from the performance Breastfall, 2022

Image 3: Breastfall, 2022

Image 4: Sexual Journey Interviews, video still, 2021

Nina Runa Essendrop

Nina Runa Essendrop is a Danish artist and larp designer with a masters degree in Theater, Dance and Performance Studies. Her work focuses on movement, sensory experiences and the meaning of physical action.

She is an active player in the Nordic Larp community. She has designed and produced blackbox larps, freeform games, large scale-larps, audience inclusive larps and larp festivals in collaboration with artists in both Europe and New York.

Essendrop has designed and run workshops, larps, performances and interactive theatre pieces at among others Transmediale 2016 (Berlin, Germany), Momentum: The 8th Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art (Moss, Norway), Athens Biennale 2018 (Athens, Greece), The Flea Theatre (New York, US), Dome of Visions (Århus, Denmark) and Ormston House (Limmerick, Ireland)

Image 1: Human Experience. Photo: Simon James Pettit

Image 2: Strangers. Photo: Peter Munthe-Kaas

Image 3: The Other Life Project. Photo: Ronja Lofstad

Image 4: White death. Photo: Peter Munthe-Kaas

Mikhela Greiner

Mikhela Greiner, (She/Her) is a Norwegian-Canadian visual artist working primarily through photography. Her work explores ideas of identity and community, family, embodiment and the sensory experience of living and growing up in our bodies. She is interested in navigating her own mind and body through physical expression, exploring how the body communicates through language, touch, gesture and movement, how our histories are manifested physically, how the body remembers, and how our own bodies communicate to us.

Greiner holds a BFA with a major in Photography from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. The university is located on unceded Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh land, colonially known as Vancouver, Canada.

Image 1–2: Mikhela Greiner, hvor jeg har havn, 2020

Image 3: Mikhela Greiner, Self-portrait

Image 4: Mikhela Greiner, Untitled

Anna-Lise Marie Hearn

Anna-Lise Marie Hearn is a British-Norwegian dance artist and choreographer living in Oslo. Since graduating from London Studio Centre in in 2013, with a specialisation in contemporary dance, her work has spanned collaborative projects, commissioned work, commercial productions, and self-produced work within both live performance and film. Working with dance and movement, she creates experiences and spaces that allow for transformation, vulnerability, and connection.

Anna-Lise’s artistic practice explores the intertwining of physical and emotional expressions of being, seeing the body as a vessel for our lived experience. As a choreographer, she works with dance and movement to express felt sensations, landscapes, and connections that are personal, societal, or metaphorical. Movement improvisation is an important element within Anna-Lise’s creative process as it fosters an approach to creating work that promotes generosity, spontaneity and visceral, bodily reactions to the material she is working with.

www.anna-lisemarie.com

Image 1: LAND, a site-responsive performance project by Anna-Lise Marie Hearn, performed at Moster Amfi in Bømlo, Norway (2022), photographed by Eduardo Scaramuzza

Image 2: LAND, a site-responsive performance project by Anna-Lise Marie Hearn, in rehearsal at Moster Amfi in Bømlo, Norway (2022), photographed by Eduardo Scaramuzza

Image 3: Workshopping “TOOLBOX”; a resource for movement improvisation and composition, photographed by Zahra Banzi

Image 4: Hands for “fold & unfold”; a workshop in collaboration with Inês Neto dos Santos

Ollie Hermansson

Ollie Hermansson (they/them, b. 1991, DK) is a visual and performance artist. They hold an MFA from Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and have studied Performative Art at Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Hermansson is currently living and working between Vienna and Oslo.

Their works are expressed with body, text, drawings, and tactile gestures. As a performer, Hermansson addresses the audience in a personal, intimate tone, aspiring to create a moment in which the audience is genuinely involved with the performance. Their works involve stories about gender-transitioning, love, and other queer experiences.

Their recent work has been shown at Kunstnernes Hus (NO), Raw Matters x Brunnenpassage (AT), exhibition space OTTE (DK) and SALT art and music / I AM UNDONE vol. 1 (NO).

Image 1: How to be a straight line (Stand-Up Edition), 2022, performance at Raw Matters x Brunnenpassage, Vienna. Photo: Esther Stern

Image 2: How to be a straight line (Stand-Up Edition), 2023, sketch

Image 3: How to be a straight line (Transition Edition, vol. 2), 2023, workshop at Slottsparken / Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, photographed by Josh Lake

Image 4: How to be a straight line (Transition Edition), 2023, performance in Formsalen, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Oslo. Photo: Isan Maher

Image 5: How to make a human roar, 2021, sketch for performance

Courtney Mackedanz

Courtney Mackedanz is a transdisciplinary artist living and working in Chicago. Her practice incorporates critical research, creative writing, collaborative dancemaking, and visual art experimentation to explore how expanded notions of the choreographic might structure, steer, catalyze, and constrain potentials in movement. Mackedanz's performances explore the themes of embodied resistance and care within the context of received and embedded choreographic conditions (such as algorithmic surveillance, or states of the nervous system).

Mackedanz earned her BFA in Performance and Visual Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013 and has since presented her work at The Arts Club of Chicago, Roman Susan Gallery, and ACRE Projects amongst others. Mackedanz has attended residencies including ImPact at Impulstanz, Landing 3.0 at the Gibney Dance Center, Nave Proyecto, and Lijiang Studio Residency among others and will be artist in residence with the Monira Foundation Chicago in 2024.

Image 1: Courtney Mackedanz. Photo credit: Elaine Suzanne Miller

Image 2-5: Metal, silicone and ice touch. Stills from studio research.

Siphiwe Mbonambi

Siphiwe Mbonambi is a Ga-Rankuwa, Pretoria-born performance artist and masseuse living and working in South Africa.

Beginning her career 20 years ago, Mbonambi began working in development theatre at the Sibikwa Youth Theatre Company. Here she discovered the power of theatre and community dialogue as a medium for positive change. She has since worked in Educational Theatre, Corporate Theatre, Film, and TV, and has remained committed to activating communities to encourage progress through constructive, critical conversation, and engagement with theatricality.

Presently, Mbonambi is completing a Masters in Applied Drama with the project Theatre of Touch. Using methodologies from Applied Theatre, this project integrates massage into theatre performance, using touch as a medium of connection. It aims to clear tensions from the body, particularly for Black womxn in South Africa. Her thesis is titled The Theatre of Touch; An Autoethnographic Exploration of Ritualised-safe-touch to Counter Dysfunction Caused by Distorted Cis-gender Identification in Black Womxn. It probes the power of drama/theatre/performance art as a tool for development and human growth.

Image 1-3: Siphiwe Mbonambi, Theatre of Touch

Nina Sarnelle

Nina Sarnelle (she/they) makes research projects, participatory performances, music composition, video and sculpture; her work interfaces with sites of neocolonialism(s), ecological destruction and labor exploitation in strange and intimate ways. They earned a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and recently had a solo video exhibition at the New Museum in New York. Her work has also been shown at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, the Getty Center, Los Angeles, Ballroom Marfa, Texas, MoMA, New York, and internationally, including venues in Istanbul, Berlin, Lisbon, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Mumbai, Vienna, Genoa, and Beijing. Her work has been featured in Frieze, Art in America, Vogue Italy, Huffington Post, SFMoMA, Creators Project, FlashArt, and Hyperallergic.

www.ninasarnelle.com