Summer/Fall 2023
Sara Alvarado, a Colombian artist and researcher based in Berlin, focuses on the culture and its constant transformation through changes of space and territory in contexts of social conflicts.
Their approach is centred on employing diverse artistic practices as a research methodology.
This entails analysing and resolving conflicts through a method that offers room for contributions stemming from social practices.
Kardelen Ayhan has a background in comparative literature and translation studies.
As a translator and intrinsic collector of natural objects and mundane artifacts, she works with art and language to question the unutterable and to interact with poetry in another manner.
She is interested in the cyanotype process as a physical and poetic form of articulation of natural and everyday phenomena, and thereby seeks to comprehend the relationship of her subject matters to time and temporality, to the imperceptible and almost-nothing-ness.
Larisa Georgeta Lugojan is a Romanian mixed media interdisciplinary artist. Her works are visually based on lived experiences, feelings and the impact nature has on humans and society and vice versa.
Her favourite mediums are Acrylic, Oil colours, collages, textures, embroidery and bits and pieces that she can implement and experiment with to create captivating canvases that create a narrative by themselves, without the permanent need for a written concept, each viewer can come up with their own narrative and version of the concept based on their personal experience.
Abril Lukac is a dance practitioner born in Buenos Aires. She started professional ballet at the Higher Institute of Art of the Colon Theatre from the age of eleven.
Unhappy with the elitism of ballet, she followed dances that are more coherent with her beliefs. She became part of the CABA : Folkloric Contemporary Dance of Buenos Aires & expanded her knowldge in contemporary dance at Frankfurt University of music and Performing Arts.
This experience has influenced her interest from dance towards the construction of identities, historical cultural revisionism and decolonial thought.
Hey current works are oriented around how to physically process her story, how to get colonialism out of her body and how to work and be in community.
SAM MADHU is a Berlin-based digital artist.
Her work explores the endlessness of bodies in digital and physical spaces.
She creates environments and situations where bodies can be pushed beyond their physical, biological and rational limits.
She sees bodies as buildings, landscapes, monoliths and other facets of architecture. The body is a direct representation of a higher power.
Chie is an observer, who seeks to understand and to share the beauty they discover.
They paint to give space to moments of silence, rest and connection.
VICTORIA MARTÍNEZ is a visual artist originally from Mexico & currently based in Berlin.
Her work involves storytelling of political realities and fictional possibilities, using abstraction and poetry as entry points.
Her practice is influenced by counter-colonial ways of seeing and an interdisciplinary approach, working with video, sound and print.
She has a background in philosophy and is currently part of Lens-based New Media Class at Udk Berlin.
Marina Rayzuki‘s collection of artworks explores the theme of the voice of the inner body. Her figurative paintings which feature twisted and almost grotesque body shapes, are accompanied by subtle facial expressions.
In her abstract series, she works with layers of tattered cloth and ripped canvases that are sewn together using colorful threads, reflecting the delicate and daring nature of repairing, a desire to reconnect with the physical flesh and inner sensations.
While conveying vulnerability she uses repeated strokes of the threads to emphasise the reality of failing, ripping, and breaking, telling a story of the perpetual cycle and inner sensations.
Simultaneously she conveys vulnerability and a composed strength that comes from the repeated strokes of the threads while also recognizing the reality of failing, ripping, and breaking, telling a story of the perpetual cycle.
Lian Ryan explores spatial and structural relationships and investigates the duality of chaos and order. After graduating from painting and visual culture at the Edinburgh College of Art in 2022 she has been working in Reykjavik with a local sculptor and performance artist where she participated in and co-curated group exhibitions.
She is motivated by the physical process of making that echo natural and man-made cycles and patterns in an attempt to rationalise something vast and capricious such as space and time. Her multiracial background and interest in cultures and human behaviour propels her to confront complex systems to invite the viewer to recognise their presence as the subject in her work and acknowledge their presence beyond it.
Both in art and work processes an anti-discriminatory approach is important to her. She is interested in addressing topics from a perspective of resistance, in contradictions, challenging viewing habits, in questioning, overwriting and re-interpreting bodies and dominant narratives and in unfolding political utopias.
Soraya has been performing in several productions at Maxim Gorki Theater. She worked for Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Falken Berlin, Ballhaus Ost and for the IN*VISION seminar & festival, among others. Together with Lea Sherin, she was initiating and directing the performative audiowalk REMEMBER NOW! – A story of remembering each other in cooperation with SOPHIENSÆLE.
This production was followed by numerous invitations to theater and discourse festivals. Most recently from the Season 21/22 - 22/23 Soraya has been working in the Artistic Mediation and Participation Department at Theater an der Parkaue.
Meanwhile she developed a new production in the public space, the performative audio nightwalk WHAT THE HEX?!, which just took place at the closing festival LEISURE AND PLEASURE at SOPHIENSÆLE.
Ash Willison is a multi-media artist and theatremaker based in Berlin. Her entry into the arts was first found devising shows while growing up in Kampala, Uganda.
Since then she has journeyed internationally and explored the arts expanding mediums to include drawing, facilitation, vocal improvisation, and soundscaping in addition to movement and performance.
Along the way she's picked up a Bachelors in English Literature, Film Studies, and Theatre and most recently completed a Master's degree at Arthaus Berlin (2021). In all her creative outlets, embodiment remains at the foundation.
As a mixed race and third culture kid (TCK), Ash believes in creativity as an active process and perhaps sharing of liminal identities. Her work is both in material and in process design with a focus on cultural reclamation.
Current collaborators include Cosmino Productions, DOGCHILD Theatre, musical duo Band Practice, Cottonwood ALC, and Mirror of Creation!
Mainly oscillating between sculpture and installation, Alungoo Xatan creates works in which the materials are meaning-making components.
With that, She delves into crude emotions such as anger, sadness, and envy that usually don't have the space to exist.
She uses recognizable visual cues like objects or symbols as a way to open up conversations on uncomfortable topics, often on diasporic life.
"Ultimately, I cease to forgive my uprooting and yearn for ways of healing."
Winter/Spring 2023-24
Lea Abena (she/her, Berlin, 1996) is a performance and multi-media artist, who is interested in the complexities of archival practice in history telling and memory culture.
She finds her artistic inspiration in the rich tapestry of memories woven by her past family members.
For Lea Abena, the notion of the archive transcends mere preservation, and it becomes a vital aspect of decolonial action, resisting the erasure of narratives and histories.
Through her art, she invites others to join her in the act of active grieving, to confront the legacies of colonization and to embrace the power of collective healing.
Jamila Barakat (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist based and working in Berlin. She adopted an artistic approach that deals with identity-forming themes, on particular the aspect of becoming oneself in a post-capitalist era.
Autobiographical references such as her palestinian-german identity, intergenerality and theories of gender, race and class are a rich source of inspiration for her.
This exploration results in a fragmentary, fluid formal language and balances the act between subjectivity and self-reflection. She co-founded the non-white collective Interspace Collective, which wanna oppose the discrimination of a predominantly white art industry.
Jamila currently studies Fine Arts in her last year at UDK berlin under Valérie Favre.
Naomi Boima (she/they) finds inspiration in Black Queer individuals from Berlin and London, weaving their stories into a vibrant tapestry of large-scale prints.
Through illustration, painting, and performance, Boima deconstructs power structures with a Black feminist lens, celebrating Queer relationships and bodies while critiquing suppressive dynamics.
Their art reflects a quest for beauty in desire, embracing diverse love outside white cis-heteronormativity.
Baharan Eghbalzadeh (she/any pronouns) is an Iranian interdisciplinary artist, writer, and researcher based in Berlin. Baharan is focused on the intersection of art, literature, and technology. She has an MA in New Media Design. She also has an MA and BA in Performing Arts.
Baharan started working with digital and new media in 2017 and has created multiple artworks and installations using AI and New Media tools. Her main focus at the moment is to explore themes of loss, grief, and resistance through speculative narratives.
Zahra Gardi is a visual artist and a storyteller from Afghanistan.
Her mission is to illuminate the narratives of migrants‘ lives, with a particular emphasis on the experiences of migrant women, through her art.
As a storyteller, she has captured the tales of migrants in Greece with her photographic work in projects such as the „From Inside Project“ and „the 1000 Dream Project“.
Currently residing in Berlin, she is concentrating on filmmaking and directing. Additionally, in the wake of Afghanistan‘s collapse and the Taliban‘s rise in power, she is making concerted efforts to convey her protest against the oppression of women by engaging in street theater and employing art as a medium of dissent.
Nicol Navas Gómez (Cúcuta, 2001) is a poet and playwright, whose work explores the complexities of urban realities and identity.
A graduate in BA Comparative Literature (UCM), she relocated to Berlin for an MA in British Studies (HU).
Beyond her creative pursuits, Nicol’s research career focuses on counterculture and minorities with a holistic approach to understanding arts in projects such as 'Hearing New Voices of Venezuelan Migrant Women’.
Bridging academia, creativity, and social commitment, Nicol emerges as a strong voice at the intersection of literature, migration, and the city.
EZO draws inspiration from movement, whether it is from plants, objects, or animals. Designing garments and jewelry is the language he excels in.
He expresses his thoughts and feelings through his work, capturing the beauty that surrounds us in everyday life, yet we forget to take in.
His joy in experimenting with different shapes, techniques, and unconventional materials allows him to create a vision.
Moreover, he goes beyond that by telling stories through clothing and bringing them to life. This is what makes his artworks stand out and gives them a unique quality.
Victoria Gordeeva was born in the Chuvash Republic. Her work, rooted in Chuvash heritage, focuses on decolonization and cultural identity.
Gordeeva combines materials from different environments and temporalities to create narrative sculptures that explore collective memory and resistance.
Yagé crafts worlds with the intention of transporting you to a dimension brimming with magical beauty, love, and pain.
Qüinn‘s current artistic journey revolves around the process of self-discovery andempowerment, a visceral exploration of the world as it naturally unfolds to them.
This involves a radical deconstruction of the Western perspective imposed upon them and a reconstruction based on an indigenous understanding of life.
Hakan is a multimedia artist, using photography and videography to narrate stories from public spheres while working mostly around the notion of memory, collective experience and identity.
His recent works are focused on censorship against the oppressed within public spaces in
Turky.
Now based in Berlin, he is perceiving new visual approaches to study memory and identity in different settings.
His recent series showcases a visual users-manual for legally ‘male’ identified Turkish citizens who are called for their obligatory military service.
The works offers a "how-to" guideline for
openly gay and trans individuals who need further help to prove thei sexual orientation for their military exemption.
Focused on unraveling material properties, she extracts features that express both her individuality and connection to the world.
Raras Umaratih (they/she/dia) is a multimedia artist and community organizer who believes in shifting away from a competitive and merit-based art-as-commodity industry, and into practices that seek to relate, and to keep the conversation going.
Organizing, cracking open spaces, and distribution of privilege is an integral part of their artistic practice.
If we may call it a social sculpture, then people are the most fragile of mediums. Besides that they like to make things that are small, or distributable, or that change over time, that are made to be lost or to deform, as well as site-specific performances.
All Mirror of Creation projects as well as MOC Art Residency have been funded by
MOC Art Residency is working in cooperation partnership with