Artists 2023

Invited artists:

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                   Image: Saadet Türköz. @Zeynep Özkanca

Saadet Türköz was born in Istanbul/TU in 1961. She currently lives in Zurich. https://saadet.ch/

“I see my vocal art as a chance to communicate with people from different cultures. While it’s deeply rooted in kazakh and turkish tradition it also embraces contemporary influences from free jazz and improvisation”. Saadet Türköz

Due to the political pressure exerted by the Chinese government on the Turkic peoples of East Turkestan (the Uighur Autonomous Region), my parents fled to Istanbul, where they settled as refugees from Kazakhstan. They passed on to us the rich oral and musical traditions of the Central Asian highlands. To this day, the elders of the Kazakh community have influenced my imagination as a musician with stories of their distant land and their journey to Turkey. Kazakh and Turkish music have always impressed me. Its humanity, archaic power and melancholy have moved me deeply.

I was 20 years old when I left Istanbul to live with my sister in Switzerland. There I experienced an exciting new world of music: free jazz, improvisation and a refreshing openness to experimentation that suited my unbiased approach to the musical traditions of my origins.

In my improvisations and performances of Kazakh and Turkish songs, I try to transform memories. I try to use voice and music to evoke images and moods that transcend cultural boundaries. The memory is the same everywhere and at all times – unchangeable – but the expression is different: the individual perception develops a universal impression of cultural life.

Saadet Türköz has been performing for over thirty years with various formations on different stages.

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Image: Elsbeth Carolin Iten. BANG BANG, Soziale Eleganz. Tinguely Museum, 2022. ©Maricruz Peñaloza
  • Elsbeth Carolin Iten was born in Switzerland in 1967.  Lives and works as an artist and photographer in Lucerne/CH. Her performance is developed together with Dana Iova-Koga. /Lucerne-New York. https://elsbeth-carolin-iten.kleio.com.

Elsbeth Carolin Iten has a Bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies and Sociology, a Master’s degree in Cultural Studies and a Master’s degree in Fine Arts. She has participated in various exhibitions and performances.

Elsbeth Carolin Iten’s work is determined by understanding, questioning or expressing aspects of life and being human and living together with humans and „more-than-humans“. On the one hand, she explores the possibilities, conditions and limits of cognition in dealing with plants. She asks what happens when we choose strategies of empathy, fiction and curiosity instead of a scientific approach to plants. Is it possible to get in touch with a plant? At the same time, she explores the possibilities of depicting, transcending and poetising the exceptional. She is particularly interested in sacred spaces where people gather to pray, meditate or worship together or alone. Gardening and regular retreats to places of contemplation influence her work. Her artistic practice moves between photography, performance, video, drawing and text.

Dana Iova-Koga started dancing at the age of 4 and her first role was a cloud. More than 40 years later, she is still exploring how to be a cloud. Dana’s intense study of movement and performance led her to New York University’s Experimental Theatre Wing, where she studied with many outstanding teachers. Her exploration of dance deepened exponentially when she joined Min Tanaka’s farm and dance company Tokason in rural Japan in 1997. From 1997-2002 she danced in dozens of performances under Tanaka’s direction. As part of Tokason, she also grew vegetables and green tea. In 2006 Dana joined the dance theatre company inkBoat and has since performed in many inkBoat productions. In 2011 she made her directorial debut with the inkBoat production „LineBetween“. Since 2006 she has been teaching „Dance on Land“ together with her partner Shinichi Iova-Kogas. In 2020 Dana founded a mentorship programme called „Unfolding“ to support people who want to enrich their creative and/or physical practice. Dana has had the honour of working with the legendary Anna Halprin on several of her productions. She is a lineage holder in the 17th Wudang San Feng Pai through her Shifu David Wei of Wudang West. She is a mentor of Jozef Sprucek and an „Inspire by FM“ instructor at Fighting Monkey.

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Mots de passes incantatoires à l’usage des enfants d’immigrés turcophones. ACT performance festival Biel, 2022 © Sebastien Lendenmann

Murat Mevlana Temel (stage name Havasu Kaya) is a writer and a performer born in Geneva, Switzerland to Anatolian Turkish and Helvetic French parents. His writings explore everyday anecdotes and mystical experiences from a diasporic perspective. The Turkish language occupies a significant position in his storytelling, as a mean to connect to his origins and preserve the language from the threat of forgetfulness within a diasporic context. Murat’s French and Turkish texts are performed in site-specific locations such as galleries and festivals, windows and tunnels. They are also sometimes performed in the form of playful thematic interactions with the public. His work, “Mots de passes incantatoires à l’usage des enfants d’immigrés turcophones”, was recently published as part of the annual publication of l’Ours Blanc. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art, Valais School of Art (édhéa), Sierre/CH, 2016 – 2019. In 2022, Temel obtained his MA in Contemporary Arts Practices from Hochschule der Künste Bern and was awarded by Ober-Gerwern-Masterpreis 2022.

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Must or Not. Basel 2020 ©Markus Goessi

The collective is primarily concerned with climate change and tries not just to stand by and watch, but to actively incorporate the issue into their performance. The members provide each other with current information on climate change from science, society, politics and psychology. Their artistic work is linked to activism. Shedding light on the coexistence of man and nature in the here and now is important to them.
Sara Koller is a performance artist and meteorologist based in Bern. She holds a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Performance Art from the Accademia Teatro Dimitri under the direction of Stéphanie Lupo. She studied voice and speech at the ZHdK and graduated with a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Voice Training/Speech with Tillmann Braun, Oliver Mannel and Irmela Beyer. Her performative work moves between dance, music and visual arts. She cites the human body as the connecting medium between these artistic disciplines. Her previous projects have included collaborations with Omar Ghayatt, Shahzad Ismaily, Matt Mottel and Jyri Pasanen. The poetic quality of Ursula Scherrer’s work draws the viewer in and lets them sink into their own stories. Inner and outer landscapes are transformed into abstracted portraits of forms, colours, words, movement, silence and time. Scherrer’s journey began with dance and choreography and led to photography, video, text, mixed media and performance art. Space, light and time are inextricably intertwined. Ursula Scherrer was born in Schaffhausen in 1966 and lived in New York from 1988 to 2019. Her works and performances have been shown at international festivals, museums, galleries and off-spaces.

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Image provided by Cindy Cedeño

We are a non-profit association founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2020. Our aim is to develop actions in favour of gender equality and the fight against all forms of discrimination through different forms of artistic expression.

The Swiss Drummers Network is a circle of women, trans and non-binary people who occupy public space by drumming. The drum is our instrument of resistance.
The network also aims to involve people in the preservation and development of Afro-Caribbean rhythms. This social movement was born in 2016 in Barranquilla, Colombia, under the name Red de Tamboreras. The creators of this network are Jennifer Meza Mayorga (Jenn del Tambó) and Grace Lascano Garrido (Orito Cantora).
Both are nationally and internationally recognised artists for their commitment to research and teaching in the field of traditional music in Colombia.
In 2019, Cindy Cedeño launched the initiative in Switzerland within the Huelga Feminista Collective and with the support of Jenn and Orito.
Cindy Cedeño is a Colombian artist and cultural mediator. She has extensive experience in creating and managing social management projects in several Latin American countries.
Since then she has been running the Red de Tamboreras de Suiza. She runs weekly workshops in which participants learn Afro-Colombian rhythms. Together they create socially engaged performances in the fight for anti-feminism, anti-racism, decolonisation and all forms of discrimination.

Every year, an artistic residency is organised in Switzerland with the creators of the Red de Tamboreras de Colombia.

In 2020 Cindy Cedeño started the Master TRANS (socially engaged art practice) at Haute École d’Art et de Design – Genéve (HEAD). By 2022 she will have graduated with honours, especially for her thesis on Art, Public Space and Civic Engagement.

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 Artist’s portrait as roulette players. ©Andrea Marioni, 2023 

He works as an artist and curator, creating process-based artworks and experimental narratives. Since 2023 board member of PANCH – Performance Art Network Switzerland.

Marioni’s works take inspiration from psychology, anthropology, history of cinema and history of art, in order to seek and question collective memory.  

His works are molding repressed emotions into tangible forms while artfully incorporating childhood aesthetics. Andrea Marioni is chaos becoming order or order becoming chaos, it’s never clear, there’s always a movement of transformation. He borrows a definition of the artist from Marshall McLuhan that suits him well:  The criminal, like the artist, is a social explorer.  At the same time, he has explored different environments, from the factory to the restaurant, from film technician to sandwich man on the streets. Since 2018, as Artist Run Space, he has been running an exhibition space in Biel called „espace libre“, where he is involved in programming and disseminating indisciplinary artistic practices. Within this framework he has created exhibition-residence formats inspired by the permaculture technique, as well as conferences under the name of Lumpen Universität and a web radio station Lumpen station. Her practice develops through several media: spoken words, theatre, performance/happening, installation, video and photography, often with the attitude of a wild anthropologist, juggling psychiatry and social organisations in a seesaw movement. Andrea Marioni’s work is perhaps a fiction that becomes reality, or a reality of fiction.

Andrea Marioni’s career has taken many forms: a bachelor’s degree in economics, courses in art history and film aesthetics at the University of Lausanne UNIL, a bachelor’s degree in performance art and a master’s degree at the HEAD in Geneva.

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Sophie Germanier, rowm nr. one, 2023

Sophie Germanier was born in Zurich in 1996 and lives and works as a freelance artist and dancer in Zurich and Lucerne. https://sophie-germanier.kleio.com | https://arttv.ch

In her work, she explores various strategies for no longer seeing the human being as an autonomous individual. To this end, she creates bodily-sensual narratives that make it possible to experience the permeability of the human body and thus connect it with other actors.

After studying dance in Copenhagen and Jerusalem, she completed a bachelor’s degree in art at the College of Design & Art. She has performed at various venues including the Kiefer Hablitzel Göhner Art Prize, the Naturmuseum Lucerne and the Museum of Art Lucerne, and created a play with her performance collective noDIN in collaboration with Südpol Theater Lucerne. Sophie Germanier works in various transdisciplinary constellations, has acted as a mediator as a lecturer and dance teacher at various venues and has been active as a jury member, for example on the jury for the Alumni Prize of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

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©Photo: Žarko Čulić. Courtesy of the artist.

Hristina Ivanoska was born in Skopje/NMK in 1974 . She lives and works in Skopje and Berlin.  http://hristinaivanoska.com/  | http://presstoexit.org.mk/ . 

Her overall research interest is focused on the suppression, control, and construction of collective memory regarding women’s resistance strategies and politics. She works with objects, text, drawing, video, performance, and installation, often interdisciplinary. Ivanoska critically investigates the experience of present-day social and political systems and their relationship to theory and history. Ivanoska validates handcraft such as embroidery, weaving, pottery, and quilting as mediums of political and social value and as a representation of individual struggle and limitations. Since 2000 she collaborates with artist Yane Calovski. In 2004 together they co-established a platform for artistic research and curatorial practices “press to exit project space” in Skopje.

Since 2014- Doctoral candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna . M.F.A., Faculty of Fine Arts, University Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje 2013. B.F.A., Faculty of Fine Arts, University Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, 1997. 

Hristina Ivanoska’s  work has been shown at Manifesta 14 Prishtina, the European Nomadic Biennial, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, Vienna and many other museums throughout Europe, in collaborative, group and solo exhibitions. 

 She is also represented in public collections: Deutsche Bank Collection. Art Telekom Collection. Van Abbemuseum. Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje and the World Bank Collection. She is also represented in public collections Deutsche Bank Collection. Art Telekom Collection. Van Abbemuseum. Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje. World Bank Collection. She has also received many awards and art residencies, including: Foundation for Arts Initiative, w/ Yane Calovski, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, w/ Yane Calovski, ArtsLink Projects, New York, grant for collaborative project Skopje Park Fun w/ Kristen Baumlier and Nathaniel Parsons (USA), Research visit together w/ Yane Calovski at the Fuchsbau Politics and Arts Festival, Hanover, Germany, supported by i-Portinus, The spread of a crack is halted by a hole, M4gastatelier, Amsterdam, organized by Suns and Stars in the context of the European project Collective Domain of Cultural Memory (CDCM), curated by Anastasija Pandilovska and Marjoca de Greef. Tobačna 001 Cultural Centre, MGML, w/Yane Calovski, Ljubljana.

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DIJALOG | DIALOGUE  between human and ministry of culture ©courtesy of the artist, 2023

Julija Castellucci was born in Serbia/SRB in 1993 . Currently based in Skopje and Belgrade. Instagram: @digitalimovina

Julija Castellucci is a conceptual and performance artist. Julija Castellucci is a conceptual and performance artist. She graduated from the Academy of Music – Skopje, Republic of Macedonia in 2017. She holds a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance. She works in the field of temporal and spatial art, whose immersive approach includes sound art, video, installation, intervention in space in the form of sound sculpture. She constantly incorporates specific personal themes and motifs into her work. Humour and satire are very much present in Castellucci’s work, communicated to the public in verbal, visual, sonic or written form. Her authenticity as a sonic sculpture lies in the sophisticated vocal aesthetics, timbre and frequency of the voice, which creates a link between primordial and contemporary vocal expression. As a sonic sculpture she creates an abstract drawing within the space and time of her presence.

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“At angle of 45 degrees” Ivana Mirchevska, artist book published by Private Print Studio Skopje ©2022

  • Ivana Mirchevska was born in Northern Macedonia in 1992, she lives and works in Skopje/NMK.

 She is a visual artist and researcher working across moving images, text and installation. Ivana’s research is drawn to topics that come from the intersection between the technologies of vision, the spatial configuration of the gaze and the body. 

She holds an  BFA (2011-2015) Faculty of Fine Arts, University „Ss. Cyril and Methodius“ Department of Painting, Skopje/NMK. Study Programme in Visual Arts (January-May 2013) Siena Art Institute, Siena, Italy Installation Art and Digital Multimedia and a MFA (2015-2019) Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, School of Visual Arts, Milan/ Italy.

Throughout her practice and research, Ivana often collaborates with different  allies, from a variety of disciplines and practices. She is involved in on-going in/formal collaborations with Elena Chemerska, Ishjan Twin, Natasha Nedelkova, Amir Karahasan among others. Taking an active role in the local independent and experimental art scene, Ivana is one of the co-founders and curator of the Underground is Easier to Breathe Festival- a platform for ephemeral and experimental art practices curated by Kula Collective.

Her most recent works and artistic engagements include: “Humanoid troubles“ an ongoing participative art project in collaboration with KSP Centar Jadro (2022), “Medium Crevice: Alternative Set of Footholds for Ascending” at Gallery Ko-Ra, Skopje (2021) and DENES AWARD, National Gallery Multimedia Center Mala Stanica, Skopje (2022), an artist book “At an angle of 45 degrees” published by Studio Private Print, “Notes From Surfacing: At an Angle of 45 Degrees” at Studio Private Print (2021).

Ivana Mirchevska was awarded the Denes Prize for Young Visual Artist (2022) in North Macedonia.

In 2013, she initiated the art collective Kula from Skopje, Northern Macedonia, until today, and in 2014 the project „Underground is easier to breathe“ Festival of independent multimedia art in Skopje, which is still running.

She also has catalogues:  At an angle of 45 degrees by Ivana Mirchevska, curated and published by Private Print, funded by Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development (2020). Video essay | SHE by Ivana Mirchevska published by PHROOM Magazine, March 2019 Exhibition catalogue | 6ª MUESTRA INTERNACIONAL DE VIDEONARRACIÓN A/R/TOGRÁFICA Utopic Method, Vera Icono Producciones. A. C., Granada, Spain (2019),  Exhibition catalogue La carica 104 Osservatorio 9, texts by Franco Marocco, Alessandro Belforti,Gaetano Grillo, research project of the Scuola di Pittura, Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan, Italy, 2018

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Image: Selfportrait, provided by the artist

Zorica Zafirovska was born in Skopje/NMK in 1982. Lives and works in Skopje,  NMK. https://artclimatetransition.eu/artist/zorica-zafirovska/

Zorica Zafirovska is an artist and a cultural worker. 

She graduated at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University “St. Cyril and Methodius”, and since 2022 she is a MA candidate at the Faculty of Fine Arts. As an artist, she works on socio-political topics, such as human trafficking, homelessness, consumerism and ecology, by creating specific, time-space installations, actions, by using collaborations and volunteering practices. 

She is a co-founder and member of various collectives. 

Since 2008, she is member of F.R.I.K. (Cultural Development Association Formation) and one of the selectors of the video program part of the FRIK Festival. She is a co-founder of Art I.N.S.T.I.T.U.T. art collective and artist run project space in 2009, and together with six women artists from Skopje, she co-founded the initiative “Momi” in 2011. In 2013 she initiated The Space, an art project in Skopje, and the same year she became a member of Jadro -Association of the independent culture scene. Since 2019, she has been working for Lokomotiva – Center for new initiatives in art and culture. She works multidisciplinary and has over 15 solo exhibitions, actions, and projects in public and non institutional spaces in North Macedonia, New York, Greece, and Germany. 

Winner of SIA Young artist award in 2014 and YVAA Award in 2016. 

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