(Unseen) War and Conflict

Elena Khurtova (she/her) and Anika Schwarzlose (she/her) are interdisciplinary artists and researchers, each bringing their distinctive perspective to the intersections of art, ecology, and technology. Reflecting on the interplay of fragility and resilience in human and environmental conditions, Elena Khurtova's work explores the overlapping notions of care and control. Her practice spans performative and sculptural installations, drawings, and artist books, establishing poetic relationships with concrete and fluid materials and mapping the transience between human and nonhuman agencies. Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions such as Contemporary Art Centre 3bisF, Manifesta biennial #13, Amsterdam Museum, and Kunsthalle Lottozero. She was awarded the artistic research fellowship of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and currently teaches at the Art and Research programme.

Anika Schwarzlose is an artist, researcher, and lecturer with a visual arts practice that involves collaborative production cycles. Her focus is on the function of archives, the repurposing of images, and reproduction techniques. Through photographic installations, video works, and film, she examines lens-based recording media and the influence of dispersion, adaptation, and composition on the political narratives they promote. Schwarzlose's work has been exhibited at renowned venues such as Zollverein Essen, ARoS Museum, Cornell University Art Gallery, Ural Industrial Biennial, Fotomuseum Winterthur, and FOAM. Presently, she teaches photography and artistic research at HKU Utrecht.

Together, Elena Khurtova and Anika Schwarzlose employ transdisciplinary strategies, combining art and research in metabolic ways to explore the complexities of our human experience in its relationship with our material environment.

Farouk Ebaiss (they/she/he) is a visual artist, human rights activist, and storyteller, born in Tripoli and currently based in Amsterdam. Farouk studied at the Fine Art and Media University of Tripoli and holds a master's degree in media and communication. He is a Rijksakademie guest resident at the Social Practice workshop with We Sell Reality Collective, a socially rebellious label and the main partner for Refresh Amsterdam.

As a multidisciplinary artist, his work focuses on Time Art, exploring the dynamic aspect of artistic expression and emphasising the temporal dimension as a crucial part of the artistic experience. Farouk's artistic themes encompass power dynamics, belonging, identity, displacement, borders, racism, and reflect on the human rights paradox within the experience of time.

His work has been exhibited at various venues such as the Amsterdam Museum, Framer Framed, Oude Kerk, Open Ateliers Noord, and NTR Studio. Farouk has collaborated with renowned organisations, including The Narrative Collective, Warq Laboratory, LIMBO Amsterdam, New Dutch Connections, Amsterdam United, Wat We Doen, Achter De Berg Producties, What You See Festival, Over het IJ Festival, and Theater De Gasten.

Farouk is a co-founder of 'Faces and Places', a multimedia storyteller platform, and 'BALACONA', an experimental stage for artists. He tirelessly works to raise awareness about social justice issues, advocating for equality, dignity, and fair treatment for all.

Fransisca Angela (she/her) works from within everyday lived experiences. Her work mainly touches upon human stories in relation to place, the in-between, and memory. In her practice, she utilises various mediums, from image, text, audio, and video. Through personal narratives, she invites people to experience life fragments that allow them to reimagine a new reality, standing in for what has been lost amidst adversity.

Micha Adarian (she/her) is a Lebanese journalist, transgender woman, activist, refugee, living in the Netherlands. Alongside journalism, she worked with humanitarian organisations as a life coach. And she co-founded the media platform 'Faces and Places' with the slogan 'All stories matter'! She actively supports her Trans community during protests, the Day of Remembrance, Prides and the Women’s March Against Violence. Her career goals and personal aims are intersectional: questioning people in power, fighting for diversity and always choosing revolution!

Miloš Trakilović (he/him) is a Bosnian-Dutch artist. He holds a MFA from the University of Arts in Berlin where he graduated in the Experimental Film and New Media Art department. His practice revolves around the politics of perceptibility exploring issues of dissolution; fragmentation, memory and loss. His topical interest is the role of vision in the construction of meaning and production of power following the digital turnover. His work combines film, animation, lectures and writings, commonly presented in installation formats.

Moe Satt (he/him) is a Burmese visual and performance artist who uses his own body as a symbolic field for exploring self, identity, embodiment, and political resistance. He is part of a renowned generation of experimental contemporary Burmese artists who overcame government censorship and oppression to engage with conceptual artwork, the body, and identity. He founded the Beyond Pressure International Performance Art Festival in Yangon, Myanmar.

Mohammad Abou Chair (he/him) is Palestinian/Dutch, a graphic designer and filmmaker, born in 1994 in Syria to a Lebanese mother and a Palestinian father, yet he was a refugee and stateless for 28 years. The artist is currently based in the Netherlands and graduated with a master's degree in fine arts and design in 2022 from the Master Institute of Visual Cultures AKV| St. Joost, where he initiated the start of his own film and artistic career. In 2015, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in graphic design and visual communication from the American University of Culture & Education, during his life period in Beirut, Lebanon.

During the Abou Chair’s life as a stateless, he found himself lost between identities, and how his surroundings perceived him and his work. He was not surprised that his existential crisis, pain, and suffering ignited an identity-led practice. Within time, he managed to look from a peephole of life, to find the beauty in pain. His curiosity motivated him to represent different visual narratives and perspectives, not only to create empathy, but as a way of empowering marginalised identities, people, and overlooked social issues.

Jort van der Laan’s (he/him) artistic practice of video and printed matter addresses the tangled relations between immunity and community. Plural and porous, body and mind are presented as an assemblage that is, in turn, part of other assemblages: artistic / political / cultural / economic / spiritual / medical. Van der Laan obtained his MA at the Dutch Art Institute (2011) and a BA at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. He was a resident artist at King’s College, London. His work has been presented at venues including Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht; Rongwrong, Amsterdam; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; The Tokyo Art Book Fair; and Zico House, Beirut. He has been regularly involved with the Rietveld Academie’s Studium Generale since 2011. Recently he became an external PhD candidate at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts in Leiden.