Emese Bíborka Szakács

Hana Selena Sokolović was born in Vienna in 1999 and grew up in Belgrade. She is a visual artist and researcher working between the Balkans and the Netherlands. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, some of which are As Water Softens Stones (Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague, 2025), Push, Pull, Shift (Živi Atelje DK, Zagreb, 2025), 00:05:59 (Paradise, The Hague, 2024), and Fragments in Transit (Beetroot Studio, Thessaloniki, 2024). Alongside her artistic practice, she has worked with children in educational and socially engaged settings, an experience that continues to shape her people-centered and collaborative approach to art. Hana holds a BA in Photography and New Media from FAMU in Prague (2021) and an MA in Photography and Society from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (2025). She currently lives and works between Belgrade and The Hague.

Florine Thiebaud (b. 1992, France) is a photographer based in Marseille. With a post-documentary practice that combines photography and writing, she places a significant emphasis on publishing. She explores the notions of imprisonment and isolation, the passage of time, loss of control, identity, and her connection to others. From 2016 to 2019, she developed two projects focused on the consequences of the waiting for papers for exiled people in Greece, placing the relationship with the other at the heart of her practice.The first was the project Exils, which won the Roger de Conynck Prize and was exhibited at the Recylart Gallery in Brussels, followed by Breaking Point. The latter was co-published as a book in May 2022 with Stockmans Art Books, and was exhibited at FOMU in Antwerp and at the Contretype Gallery in Brussels as part of the .TIFF selection and Propositions d’Artistes. Developing her reflections on notions of imprisonment and isolation and their consequences, she is currently working on a project about families of incarcerated people, Des Ondes (On Waves), based on a personal story. This project has received support from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, and part of it was already exhibited in 2023 at the Delta Cultural Center in Namur as part of a group exhibition. In parallel, following confrontations with her own physical and mental limits facing depression, she developped a new series of self-portraits: Revenir (Coming back). Using once again repetitive imagery and a consistent aesthetic, she explores the intersection of vulnerability, isolation, and transformation through self-portraiture. Photographing herself during moments of crisis and depression, she seeks to capture the disconnect between her inner world and reality.

João Bragança Gil (Lisbon, 1989) is an artist, based in Lisbon, Portugal. Attended the Painting course at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon between 2008 and 2010; Graduated in Industrial Design in 2013 from Escola Superior de Artes e Design. In 2014, Bragança Gil moved to London, graduating in MA Industrial Design at Central Saint Martins UAL in 2016. In 2019 Bragança Gil, moved to Lisbon, and started practicing fine arts full-time. Currently he’s pursuing a Media Arts PhD at Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon.‍Recent exhibitions include “Drop me in the river, Dip me in the water!” (2021) at Galeria Pedro Cera; “The sun, the oldest, the sheep, as the origin (on and on) and the klecks klecks” (2021), by Sismógrafo at Casa das Artes, Porto; “CODA” (2022) at Buraco, Lisbon, “Uncertain Strata” at EGEU; “Estudo do Meio”, Carpintarias de S. Lázaro; “Midnight Sun”, Mono. Recidency at Arquipélago — Centro de Artes Contemporâneas, São Miguel, with FetArt (France) and CiCLO (Portugal). In 2023, Bragança Gil presented “Artificial Paradises” (2023) a solo exhibition at the National Museum of Science and Natural History, resulting from more than two years of research.‍In 2024, participated in the group exhibition “Entre Margens” curated by João Pinharanda and the group show “Passages” at Galeria Encounter; and the solo exhibition “Trouble in Paradise” at (Projectspace) at the Encounter and Jahn und Jahn Gallery, in Lisbon.

Is a Ukrainian photographer who has been working as a freelance reporter in the field of documentary and journalistic photography since February 2022. From the first months of the invasion, he began shooting for Associated Press and European Pressphoto Agency as a freelancer. He continues to capture stories of people on the front lines and in de- occupied territories while working on his own projects. In 2023, he received his first award: 25 Under 25: "Young and Daring" and became a member of the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers (UAPP). In 2025, while reporting from the front line, George was seriously wounded in a Russian FPV drone strike in which his colleague, French photojournalist Anthony Lallikan, was killed. He is currently undergoing rehabilitation.

Daniel Chatard is a German-French documentary photographer and visual researcher. He investigates themes revolving around power structures, collective identity, and trauma. Looking at landscapes as vessels of collective experiences and memories, he tells human stories in their environmental context. Daniel graduated in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hanover, and in Photography & Society at the Royal Academy of Arts The Hague. He lives in Hamburg and works as a freelance photojournalist with media outlets such as Die ZEIT, Der Spiegel, and Bloomberg. Daniel describes his approach as involved documentary, making his own relations to his subjects part of the work and using collaboration to create new knowledge. His long-term project Niemandsland was awarded at the World Press Photo Award and published by the Eriskay Connection in 2024.

Dafni Melidou is a research-based artist working across photography, video and olfactory media. Melidou's practice questions how visual and sensory narratives shape our understanding of social inequalities and ecological fragility. Their work revolves around themes of class, gender, grief, migration, and mechanisms of exclusion in more general terms. This often happens by layering mediums, destabilizing hierarchies of perception, and creating spaces where dialogue emerges. Melidou holds a Master's degree in Photography & Society from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK) where they are currently teaching.

Malte Uchtmann (*1996 in Hamburg) is a photographer and media artist based in Leipzig, Germany. Using different visual media he is interested in how concepts of knowledge, truth and reality are expressed and affect our perception and behavior. His work has been awarded the German Photo Book Prize and was shortlisted for the C/O Berlin Talent Award 2023. He is currently part of the Photography and Media Class and the Expanded Cinema Class of the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig.

Marco Frauchiger is an artist living and working in Bern, Switzerland. Working primarily with photography and video, his artistic practice investigates image politics and the material conditions of image production, particularly in relation to Switzerland’s global entanglements. Since 2009, he has been working independently on documentary and conceptual projects. He developed his photographic practice through independent study. From 2004 to 2005, he was a member of the group of self-taught photographers GaF in Bern. In 2013, a grant enabled him to undertake an extended working stay in Laos, where he developed a new body of work and collaborated with NGOs. In 2014, he attended a one-year masterclass in Vienna, followed by further education programs and workshops in photography. From 2018 to 2020, he completed the Master in Contemporary Art Practice (CAP) at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB). In spring 2025, he completed the CAS Theory and History of Photography at the University of Zurich. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in institutions including Fotomuseum Winterthur (2026), Kornhausforum (2026), Bieler Fototage (2025), Musée d’art de Pully (2023), Noorderlicht International Photography Festival (2021), or Kunstmuseum Thun (2020). In 2022, he was awarded the Prix Photoforum for his work How to dismantle a bomb. Marco Frauchiger is a member of NEAR – Swiss Photographers, the Pool Collective, Visarte Switzerland, and serves on the board of Visarte Ateliers Bern.

Vanessa Amoah Opoku is a German-Ghanaian interdisciplinary artist who transforms imperial surveying technologies such as LiDAR into relational tools. Her practice explores how diaspora and displacement, affecting bodies, species and materials, develops its own cartographic technologies: systems for connecting across distances. Through fragmentary point cloud scans and their materialization in space, she creates multi-layered installations made of wax, textiles, and digital fragments that invite encounter. She has been nominated for the European Commission's and Ars Electronica’s S+T+ARTS Prize 2025, and is part of BPA// Berlin program for artists 26-27. Her work has recently been shown at Belvedere 21 Vienna, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Fotomuseum Winterthur, EIGEN+ART Lab Berlin, and at the 18th International Triennial of Textile in Łódź. She teaches process design at HGK Basel FHNW. An artist's book will be published by DISTANZ in 2026.