artists

Miriam Bäckström (born 1967, Sweden) is perhaps best known as a conceptual photographer, emerging in the 1990′s with her images of empty interiors. Bäckström’s ongoing interests explore how history is told, and processes of creating and recreating memory using photography, text, theatre and video.

Since the late 1990’s Tania Bruguera’s (born 1968, Cuba) artistic practice has often reflected back on the social, cultural and economic experience of being Cuban. Through an interdisciplinary practice spanning installation, social intervention and most prominently performance, Bruguera explores the role art can play in daily political life, bringing light to the individual’s understanding of self as part of a collective historical and contemporary social memory.

Berlin based artist Phil Collins (born 1970, England) has a performance-based and conceptual practice that uses video and photography to investigate the nuances of interpersonal relations within global communities. Collins has extensively pursued his practice since the early 2000’s across places that have experienced geopolitical unrest, cities such as Baghdad, Belgrade, Bogotá, and most recently, Jakarta.

Indian artist Sheela Gowda’s (born 1957) use of unconventional materials is a highly evocative element of her practice, tactile qualities of thread, hair, traditional dyes, pattern and weaving, bring the viewer’s attention to a meaning that transposes these elements into social objects and practices located within a network of production and distribution, framed in relation to India’s socio-political legacy.

For Mexican artist Teresa Margolles (born 1963) sculptural installations and performance bring the physical reality, and materiality, of death to the fore. Typically activating the blind spots of our imagination, Margolles collapses the distinction between art and reality. In 2009 Margolles represented Mexico at the 53rd Venice Biennale with her work ‘What Else Could We Talk About, Cleaning’

Darius Mikšys’ (born 1969) work has since the late 1990′s focused on the recontextualization of events, experiences, and histories into unstable narratives. For Mikšys, installations provide the opportunity to experiment, conceptualise, and re-imagine processes of making, displaying and engaging with art. Most recently he has represented Lithuania at the 54th Venice Biennale with his project Behind the White Curtain, 2011.

Slovenian artist and architect Apolonija Šušteršič (born 1965) has focused on the social aspects of living environments manifested in art as well as architectural contexts since the 1990’s. Her cross-disciplinary approach to creating works within urban environments leads to a socially engaged practice that brings together artists and architects, critics and curators that goes beyond art and architecture, and takes the form of everyday life.

Lida Abdul works primarily in performance and video art, posing questions about place, community and the meaning of our surroundings.