Photo by Lilly Urbat

Hannah Cooke (*1986 in Munich) currently lives and works in Karlsruhe, Germany. Her work has been exhibited at the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Badischer Kunstverein, Kunstverein Freiburg, Contemporary Art Space in Baku (Azerbaijan), A4 Art Museum in Chengdu (China) and Kleine Humboldt Galerie Berlin, among others. So far she has received funding by the “Neustart Kultur” 2020, the Federal Prize for Art Students 2015, a six month residency at Cité internationale des arts Paris, as well as project funding by the City of Karlsruhe, the Mother Art Prize 2018 (London) and numerous other awards, prizes and working scholarships. Her media art studies at HfG Karlsruhe with Prof. Fishkin, Prof. Jermolaewa, Prof. Clegg and Prof. Linke brought her to the University of Amsterdam for a semester in 2012. www.hannahcooke.de

Photo by Marie Lienhard

Chloé Coomans was born in Brussels in 1976. At the age of 15, she decided to become an artist and devote her life to creation. She began to study sculpture and graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels in 1998. Sculpture and installation already offered her great creative freedom, but she felt the need to explore other artistic mediums and forms of expression. She attended the “Experimental Practices” workshop at the Braine-L’Alleud art school, where she discovered video, silkscreen printing, etc. Limitlessly, she developed her own poetic, committed, visionary vocabulary_ universal, without any restraint. Chloé Coomans’ artistic practice is like a bet: to give a face to our inner experience. No doubt because she has the intuition that our body functions like the archaic memory of our existence, her protean work is above all the language of intimacy. www.chloécoomans.com

Photo by Chiara Bonetti

Antje Engelmann (*1980 in Ulm) multimedia works, films and performances pose questions about forms of narration. Based on biographical material, interviews and found footage Engelmann as narrator creates new contexts of complex systems.Her artistic interests include ethnographic and sociological questions as well as image theories and body discourses. As a trained dance pedagogue, in her concrete approach as a teacher at numerous art universities, she always includes the body as a carrier of knowledge, generator of knowledge and constant actor. Drawing on tools from disciplines such as improvisation, choreography and performance is not only a process of knowledge but a formal aesthetic engagement. Engelmann is involved as a jury member for the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes and the Karl Schmidt- Rottluff Stipendium. She works as a professor and lecturer at various art colleges and universities and is a mentor in the women’s education network Mecklenburg-Vorpommern e.V. With her works, performances and films she is represented internationally in exhibitions and film festivals and has been awarded numerous prizes and scholarships, including the Karl Schmidt Rottluff Scholarship, the DAAD Scholarship, the working scholarship of the Stiftung Kunstfonds and the Berlin Senate for Los Angeles. There she was a visiting professor at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. Currently, Engelmann is a visiting professor at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee. www.antjeengelmann.net

 

 

Photo by Wendelin Buechler

Alessandra Eramo (*1982 Taranto, IT) is a sound artist, vocalist and composer based in Berlin who works with performance and installation, text-sound composition, video and drawing, exploring latent acoustic territories of the human voice and noise as socio-political matter. She was trained in classical singing, piano and music theory since an early age, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and Stuttgart and completed her Master’s Degree in Performance Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy at the Ca‘ Foscari University in Venice. In her cross-media practice, she develops artistic projects and live-performances that address questions of the body, memory and identity, often adopting participatory actions, feld recording, site-specific modes, and experimental approaches to composition. Her current research focuses on the invisible and the materiality of the voice, the tension between vocality and writing, performative rituals and trance-like states with singing.
She has exhibited widely at festivals, radio, museums, galleries and institutions such as: Centrale Fies Dro (2021), Kira A. Princess of Prussia Foundation/Istituto Italiano di Cultura Brussels (2021), Deutschlandfunk Kultur Klangkunst (2020), SAVVY Contemporary Berlin (2019), Liminaria/Manifesta12 Palermo (2018), Heroines of Sound Festival Berlin (2018), Tempo Reale Festival Firenze (2017), 6th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (2017), Tsonami Arte Sonoro Festival Valparaíso Chile(2016), PACT Zollverein Essen (2015), Museum FLUXUS+ Potsdam (2014), Liverpool Biennial (2013), Galerie Haus am Lützowplatz Berlin (2012), Roulette New York, (2012) Padiglione Italia nel Mondo/54th Venice Biennale (2011)
www.ezramo.com

Photo by Dominique Brewing

Anna Gohmert (*1983 Stuttgart) Her works are dedicated to dealing with one’s own biography and, figuratively speaking, with the various attributions of the individual in society. Yes, it is possible to answer this question endlessly and variably: from to what extent do circumstances dominate conditions, to at what point would the course of the procedure still have to be redesigned.  Autonomy vs heterenomy. Opportunity vs limitation. Family members & friends appear in many of her works as narrative carriers, actors and protagonists. She negotiates memory, speechlessness and survival strategies through the media of text, video, photography and performance – usually in combination. The works follow a metonymic logic. When she is reborn, it is as a puzzle whose motif is a treasure map. Currently, in 2021, the essay volume „Sterben Üben“ (Learning to die), which she edited, is published by Edition Taube and funded by the MWK Baden Württemberg.
www.annagohmert.de

Photo by Anneke Hymmen

Zsuszanna Ilijn Zsuzsanna’s fresh, colorful, graphic illustrations can be found in magazines, newspapers and books from all over the world.
After her studies at the State Academy of Art and Design in Stuttgart, she lived in Amsterdam for seven years, worked for various graphic design studios and received the the Startstipendium from the Fonds for Nederlandse Kunsten. She started her own designstudio and her work has received several international awards. After teaching in Chongqing in China at an international artschool she moved to Berlin where she lives and works now. In 2018 Page magazine ranked her one of the best illustrators from Berlin. In 2019 her first childrens book „Mit dem Bauhaus um die Welt“ got published. She designed the visual identity for „mothers warriors and poets“.
www.helloyellowstudio.com

Photo by Jean & Claude

Renate Liebel studied painting and intermedia design at ABK Stuttgart and in Madrid, Spain. In search of high-contrast material combinations of plants, readymades and plastified forms, she finds the surreal. Questioning  where nature starts and art/society ends or reverse, reality cumulations show up in the objects, installations, digital collages or videoloops she works on. Her work is part of the Baden-Württemberg Art Collection as well as to the Collection of Kunstmuseum Böblingen and the Galerie der Stadt Backnang. She works & lives with 4 more family members in Stuttgart. www.Renateliebel.de

Photo by Joan Costeja

Marie Lienhard * 1978 in Montferrier (F) based in Stuttgart (D).
Marie Lienhard graduated in Fine Arts from the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart (D) where she studied with Werner Pokorny, Nicole Wermers, Sascha Weidner, Felix Ensslin & Mariella Mosler. Her work has been presented internationally in numerous exhibitions, for example at the ZKM (Zentrum für Kunst und Medien) in Karlsruhe (D) at the Espace multimedia Gantner in Belfort (F), at the Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen (D), during the Rencontres Internationales de Performers in Kinshasa (DRC), during the Re; publica # 19 exhibition series at Station Berlin (D) and at the Couvent Levat et la Friche belle de Mai in Marseille (F). ZKM Karlsruhe (D), Espace Multimédia Gantner in Belfort (F), FRAC Alsace (F), and the company EnBW in Karlsruhe (D) have integrated her works into their collections.

In her artistic practice, Marie Lienhard explores the human will to overcome the physical laws which govern body and mind through allegories of flying, levitating or falling. She addresses our perceptual senses to create surprising aesthetic experiences that invite us to become aware of our presumed limits, and to go beyond them. Her works oscillate between natural phenomena, societal questions and  physical experience and the suggestive forces released by pictorial means, by using all kinds of media, from installation, to virtual reality, to performance and drawing.
www.marie-lienhard.com

Photo by Vesko Gösel

Katharina Pethke is a filmmaker and former professor at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg (2012-2019). She mostly works with moving images and the idea of the personal being political. In her autobiographical films she unravels bigger questions in an essayistic approach with the research being part of the work. Her studies in German literature, art history and audiovisual media in Hamburg and Cologne were followed by internationally acclaimed works in the field of documentary filmmaking. Currently, Katharina Pethke is a PhD candidate at the Film University Babelsberg where she investigates in the field of portrait film, while she also works on her feature-length film REPRODUCTION.  www.katharinapethke.com

Photo by OKNO Studio, Florence

Lerato Shadi’s work challenges common assumptions to critique Western notions of history and make visible that which is invisible or overlooked. Working across video, performance and installation, and often employing repetitive processes, she argues the importance of centering – not just including – the marginalised body as a main figure of narrative experience. Her work has been shown internationally, most recently in two solo shows at KINDL in Berlin and at Kunstverein in Hamburg; in numerous group exhibitions i.e., at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris and Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration (both 2021), the 14th Curitiba Biennial in Brasil (2019), Kunsthal KAdE Amersfoort and the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town (both 2018) as well as in the public program ‘The Parliament of Bodies’ at the documenta 14 in Kassel (2017). www.leratoshadi.artart

Photo by Dorothea Tuch

Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro’s work analyses processes of power & science fictions in historical archives critically engaging in migrational struggles & colonial memory focusing on queer indigenous and feminist biopolitics. The artist creates immersive performative environments for alternative narratives and future speculations of colonial resistance movements led by African women of the German diaspora and indigenous communities. Sedimented in narratives of testimonial Black queer experiences of sonic nature archives, revolt, queering ecologies and postcolonial feminist experiences towards new monuments which reacts to the different tones of societies shared between delusions & ritual. The work offers complex non-binary readings pushing  new investigations about the architectures of racisms in cities, the archeologies of urban spaces & economies of traditional systems by exposing the limitations of technologies as functional memory records. She has developed frameworks of rituals and healing in performance work that often reveal the entangled colonial histories of migration at site-specific spaces to dismantle prejudices and organise accessible levels of consciousness through testimonial archives of local communities to build independant emancipatory tools for liberation, education, consciousness, intimacy and healing.

She is lecturer in Curating Black Visual Cultures & Philosophy at TransArt Institute New York & Fine Arts practice at the University of Liverpool, artistic & curatorial supervisor of the Artists in Training Programme at the UdK and the University of Bergen Norway. She is Artistic Director of Nyabinghi_Lab Collective, recently curating the performance programme ‚Radical Mutations‚ at Hebbel Am Ufer Theatre Berlin with Wearebornfree! Empowerment Radio and Free State Of Barackia. She moderates the annual Berlinale Film Festival & currently has an Artistic Fellowship from the Goethe Institute In Bahia Salvador. Her work was recently featured in ARTE Twists series „Our Colonial Heritage“ and Deutsche Welle TV in a series of short films on German Colonialism and Black Resistance. Her work has been featured in several international exhibitions and Biennales including the Havana Biennale (2019), Dak’art Biennale (2012; 2018), Venice Biennale (2016) and La Otra Biennale in Bogota (2013) and RAVVY Performance Biennale Yaoundé (2018). For more information on their work: www.anguezomo-bikoro.com

Public programme participant biographies

Photo by Paul Niedermayer

Samantha Bohatsch (*1984 in Berlin) is based in Berlin. They studied in Vienna, Berlin and Karlsruhe where they finished their studies as Meisterschülerin of Silvia Bächli. Bohatsch makes reading performances, text-based sound pieces and installations. They deal with interpersonal relationships and transformation processes, inspired by personal experiences, observations from the internet, queer and feminist literature, history and pop culture. Bohatsch has received artist fellowships by the Federal State Baden-Württemberg, the Arts Foundation Baden-Württemberg and the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. Their works have been recently shown at Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Galerie Bernau and Kunsthalle Mainz among others. www.samanthabohatsch.com

Photo by David Severin

Joanne Masding is an artist working in Birmingham, UK. She is currently working on public artwork commission #makefuturevillagehistory, in Cardiff, Wales. Recent exhibitions include In the Peaceful Dome, Bluecoat, Liverpool, 2018; Touche Eclat, Workplace, Gateshead, 2017; Plaster Ghost Finger Cast, New Art Gallery, Walsall (solo), 2017. She has undertaken artist residencies with 501 Artspace, Chongqing, China, 2013; Research and Cultural Collections at University of Birmingham, UK, 2016; and Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, Ireland, 2014. She made permanent commission Flimsy Signals, for developers Bruntwood in 2018, and received a fellowship from John Feeney Trust in 2017. In 2020 she received by nomination an Artist Award from Henry Moore Foundation. Joanne also runs online sales platform Studio Outlet, and is a director member of ceramics coop Modern Clay.
Joannemasding.com  http://studio-outlet.com  modernclay.org

Photo by Immanuel Hick

Jordan Troeller (*1985 in Santa Clara, CA, USA) holds a fixed-term lectureship in modern and contemporary art history and theory at the University of Graz in Austria, where her research focuses on the intersection between art and politics, particularly the politics involved in writing art’s histories. She is currently completing the monograph “Sculpture’s Progeny: Ruth Asawa and the Maternal Work of Art,” which is the first critical study devoted to several self-defined “artist-mothers” in postwar San Francisco. The book emerged out of her ongoing inquiry into how gender and sexuality shapes the visibility of artistic labor—a topic explored in her recent article “Lucia Moholy’s Idle Hands” (OCTOBER 172, Summer 2020). Dr. Troeller is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University, and has held positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the MIT List Visual Arts Center, and the Goethe-Institut Boston. Her scholarship can be found in numerous publications, including Art Journal, The Burlington Magazine, Hyperallergic, The History of Photography, and Women’s Art Journal, as well as the exhibition catalogue Object Lessons:The Bauhaus and Harvard (2021).

Curatorial Collaboration

Didem Yazıcı is an independent curator and writer, based in Karlsruhe Germany. Her curatorial work is inspired by thinking across disciplines in and outside of art – engaging social and political histories – the potentiality of exhibitions as socio-poetic spaces. She worked and curated exhibitions in art institutions such as Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2017-18), Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg (2015-16), Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2014); and organized public programmes for dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel (2012-13) and 2nd Edition of Project Biennial D-0 ARK Underground, Bosnia and Herzegovina (2013). In 2016, she worked as Curator for the Infra-curatorial Platform of the 11th Shanghai Biennale invited by the curators Raqs Media Collective and was Curator-in-residence at the Goethe Institute in Cairo. She studied Art History at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul (2008) and completed her M.A in Curatorial and Critical Studies at the Städelschule and Goethe University in Frankfurt. (2012). Selected exhibitions include; ‘Life, Death, Love and Justice’ co-curated with Peter Sit (Tranzit Bratislava, summer 2021), ‘Unconquered Spirits’ (Sumac Space, 2020), ‘‘200 Years Young Songs: Mehtap Baydu’ (Badischer Kunstverein, 2018),  ‘Born In The Purple: Viron Erol Vert (Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien Berlin, 2017) ‘Freedom is a State of Mind’ (The 11th Shanghai Biennale, 2016), ‘Freundschaftsspiel,’ (Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg) ‚Towards The Garden of Palms‘ (Polistar, Istanbul, 2013); ‚Apparatus Criticus & Locus‘ (Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, 2013). www.didem-yazici.org

Photo by Janine Kuehn

Lisa Tuyala: Lisa Tuyala is a singer and cultural manager. She studied jazz singing at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and arts and cultural management (M.A.) with a focus on social transformation processes at Leuphana University Lüneburg in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut. She completed her musical education with Rachel Gould, Lydia van Dam and Anette von Eichel, among others. In her artistic work she dedicates herself to the expressive possibilities of spoken word and singing in the field of improvised music. Her works, songs and lyrics during the last years revolve around storytelling and our view of the Other. Since 2010 she lives with her family in Stuttgart. She is the initiator of the „Sonntags:Musik“ series in Stuttgart West (2014-2016) and the women* music network Women* of Music (W*oM). Since 2016 she has been working at KKT (Kulturkabinett e.V.), since 2017 as deputy managing director. In this role, she is head of press and public relations as well as of various interdisciplinary projects. Among other things, she initiated and curated (2017-2021) the JAZZKABINETT – a music series organically dedicated to the interconnectedness of musical practice and current social discourses.  www.lisatuyala.com