The
Artist
Mateusz Pecyna
Lives and Works in
Lodz, Poland
Mateusz Pecyna is a Polish visual artist working with installation, moving image, objects and sound. His practice explores how technological systems and environmental stress reshape contemporary culture, especially through regimes of visibility, interfaces and synthetic forms of nature. Rather than treating technology as a neutral tool, he approaches it as a cultural agent: something that produces aesthetics, behaviours and power relations. Combining research with speculative narration, he builds layered situations that test the boundaries between documentary evidence and constructed scenarios.
Pecyna holds an MA in Photography and Multimedia from the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, Poland. He has presented work widely in solo and group exhibitions in Poland and internationally, across museums and festival contexts. He currently participates in the international Heritage Lens programme, focusing on how climate change and environmental catastrophe reorganise cultural heritage, public imaginaries and the conditions of living. He was awarded the Artistic Scholarship of the City of Łódź (2025).
Projects
No uploaded projects...
Mateusz Pecyna
was nominated by
Fotofestiwal Lodz
in
Show all projects
Each year every member of the FUTURES European Photography Platform nominates a set of artists and projects to become part of the FUTURES network.
Related artists
More artists that you might
like to explore
All artistslike to explore
Camilla Ferrari (b. 1992) is a visual artist working with images and video based in Milan, Italy.
Her work blends still and moving images to explore the ambiguity
of perception, the coexistence of dream and reality, the eloquence of silence, and the poetry found in everyday life.
Her portfolio includes features in prominent publications such as National Geographic, The New York Times, Essenziale, NPR, Artsy, and Domus. She is a Canon Ambassador.
In addition to her personal projects and editorial contributions, Camilla has collaborated with commercial clients for special commissions, including names like Apple, Lamborghini, Marcolin, and Sony Music.
In 2021 she was one of the five finalists of the ING Talent Award and in 2020 she was nominated by Camera Torino for Futures Photography, a European Platform focused on amplifying emerging artists in contemporary photography.
In 2019 she was selected by PDN as one of PDN’s 30: New and Emerging Photographers to Watch worldwide and by Artsy as one of the “20 Rising Female Photojournalists”.
I am an interdisciplinary visual artist whose practice operates at the intersection of intergenerational memory, empowerment, and a critical examination of the self in private and public spaces. I understand care—emek in Turkish—as both a political and aesthetic practice: a form of resistance, labor, and memory.
Photography is my primary medium, which I use as a means of intervention and re-inscription. Working with my family archive, I explore gestures, touches, and everyday objects as traces of embodied history. By cropping, enlarging, and rearranging these fragments, I fill in the gaps to reframe marginalized bodies and
relationships as active subjects.
Alongside this, I create intermedial spatial installations, performances, and literary works that interweave photographic and bodily memory.
My photographic language oscillates between documentation and staging. Using luminous, symbol-rich still lifes as well self- and family portraits, I examine habitus as an inscription of history—as continuity, repetition, and ruptures. In my portraits, I work with remote control, thus referring to a queer feminist canon that critically questions the medium on the level of the image.
Cristóbal Ascencio (Guadalajara, 1988) is a photographer and visual artist whose work
explores the relationship between images and memory. With studies in Audiovisual Media (CAAV Jalisco) and Contemporary Photography (EFTI Madrid), his practice goes beyondtraditional photography into virtual reality, data manipulation, and photogrammetry. He hasexhibited individually at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Spain (2025), Fundación Marso(2025) and Getxo Photo Festival (2022), and collectively at Foam Amsterdam, AthensPhotography Festival, Casa del Lago UNAM, and Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation. Selected for FOAM Talent 2024-25, he won the First Prize FotoCanal Photography Book ofthe Community of Madrid (2024) and published Las flores mueren dos veces with Editorial Dispara (2025). His work is present in collections such as Art Vontobel and Fundación ENAIRE. His work has been published in FOAM Magazine, Exit, Aesthetica, and the British Journal of Photography
Jakub Tulinger (b. 1996) is a graduate of the Department of Photography at FAMU. He took part in the collective exhibitions "The Theory of Tourism" at Prague's Fotograf Gallery (2024), "Drunken Forest" and "Scream to Be Heard" at Prague's AMU Gallery (both 2023). His work was also presented in the Other Visions selection at the PAF festival in Olomouc (2021 and 2023). Currently he is part of a residential program - Transformative Territories: Inter-Species Refuge at ARTMILL – Center For Regenerative Arts, South Bohemia. In his work, he has long devoted himself to the concept of testimony with its overlaps in materiality. He is interested in the relationship of man and material, architecture and landscape, and how these silent witnesses can speak to us. Using the tools of computer 3D graphics and animation together with the creation of books, he lends a voice to the materials and through the stories attempts to look at the problems of today.
Bertrand Cavalier unfolds his artistic thinking across photography, sculpture, drawing, and video, each medium enriching the others. His work shifts from a politics of the gaze to a logic of sensation, where art becomes a bodily experience rather than mere representation. In this way, his work is part of a contemporaneity that echoes the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, offering a reflection on our ability to communicate and share ideas beyond words, through sensations that resonate with our bodies and our spaces. — Olivier Grasser
Bertrand Cavalier has published with Fw:Books (NL, 2020) and Spector Books (DE, 2024). He is the laureate of the Prix Ville de Bruxelles – Centrale for Contemporary Art (BE, 2025) and has exhibited at FOMU Antwerp (BE), Photoforum Pasquart Biel (CH), BIP – Biennale de l’Image Possible, Liège (BE), and FRAC Orléans (FR). He received the Sébastien van der Straten Fund Award (2019) and was a resident at Artwell Amsterdam (NL, 2021) and Cité internationale des arts, Paris (FR, 2023). His work has been published in Artpress, Mouvement (both FR), Camera Austria (AT) and l’art même (BE).
Vitalii Halanzha (b. 1991) is a Ukrainian artist photographer living and working in Kyiv. His artistic practice involves engagement with the landscape, employing it as a dynamic medium to explore the complex relationships between natural processes and society.
In his recent work, Halanzha investigates the intersection of the enduring presence of warfare, environment, and perception. Using a restrained visual language, he documents the quiet aftermath of war. Avoiding the scenes of destruction, he invites viewers to observe what lingers - the latent threat, the buried remnants, the psychological and environmental imprints.
Vitalii has been selected as an artist for the third cycle of the Parallel Photo Platform in 2019-20. His works have been exhibited in numerous galleries and festivals, such as Landskrona Foto, Les Rencontres d'Arles, Odesa Photo Days, Lodz Fotofestiwal, Photo London, etc. In 2025, he is one of the nominated artists for the FUTURES European Photography Platform.
Miriam Pružincová, also known as MIMI, is a Slovak photographer, filmmaker, and visual artist. She is currently studying for her master’s degree at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, in the Photography II studio led by Alena Kotzmannová.
In her practice, she works primarily with analogue photography and video, a documentary approach, and her personal archive. Since 2019, she has been systematically collecting fragments of everyday life, which she subsequently connects into carefully composed pairs, diptychs, and visual sequences, thus creating series or an endless, unnamed body of work that is simply about life as such. Through the deliberate connecting and assembling of photographs in installations, as well as the intentional completion of series through newly made images, she disrupts the boundary between chance and staging within documentary practice. She understands photography as a form of play and a tool for storytelling — a visual poem or narrative.
At first glance, her work may appear delicate, yet it carries irony, paradox, and intense intimacy. From environmental themes and stories of people searching for their identity, the artist gradually moves toward more personal subjects that address safe spaces and generational anxieties. Her practice also engages with memory, corporeality, mental health, trauma, the relationship to nature, and the natural presence of death in life. Her work has been exhibited, among others, in Prague, Munich, London, Berlin, Milan, Tokyo, and Slovakia.
Rafael Roncato (Brazil, 1989) is an interdisciplinary visual artist, editor, and educator working between Brazil and the Netherlands. His practice examines colonial memory, media myths, and the politics of representation, focusing on how images construct belief systems and shape collective perception. Grounded in documentary photography and expanded through archival research, video, and editorial strategies, Roncato develops semi-fictional, non-linear narratives that interrogate contemporary media landscapes and historical power structures.
Inspired by comics, cinema, and Brazilian (post)modernism, his work moves fluidly across formats, from artist books to exhibitions and multimedia projects. He holds a Master’s in Photography and Society from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, where he teaches artist bookmaking and visual storytelling and mentors emerging practitioners.
His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Netherlands Fotomuseum, Noorderlicht International Photo Festival, PhMuseum Days, Les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles, Encontros da Imagem, and Schwules Museum Berlin. His photobook Tropical Trauma Misery Tour received the 1st Prize at the Kassel Dummy Award ’23 (GER), the Imaginária Festival Dummy Awards ’23 (BR), and a Special Mention at the Hong Kong Photobook Festival ’23.
Portrait of Rafael Roncato by Gita Cooper van Ingen
Inspired by comics, cinema, and Brazilian (post)modernism, his work moves fluidly across formats, from artist books to exhibitions and multimedia projects. He holds a Master’s in Photography and Society from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, where he teaches artist bookmaking and visual storytelling and mentors emerging practitioners.
His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Netherlands Fotomuseum, Noorderlicht International Photo Festival, PhMuseum Days, Les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles, Encontros da Imagem, and Schwules Museum Berlin. His photobook Tropical Trauma Misery Tour received the 1st Prize at the Kassel Dummy Award ’23 (GER), the Imaginária Festival Dummy Awards ’23 (BR), and a Special Mention at the Hong Kong Photobook Festival ’23.
Portrait of Rafael Roncato by Gita Cooper van Ingen
Marisol Mendez uses her camera to study the tension between truth and fiction,
the tight relationship between what a photograph creates and the (sur)real it comes from. Driven by research-led and self-initiated projects, she seeks to deconstruct traditional modes of representation and weave nuanced narratives with multiple layers of meaning.
At the heart of her artistic pursuit lies the exploration of humankind. Marisol is moved by the desire to build genuine connections with the people on the other side of the lens. Her objective is to encapsulate the intimacy of shared experiences, the tenderness or friction of mutual recognition.
Embracing the horizontality of images, she utilizes a diverse array of visual languages to tell stories that traverse the boundaries between individual experience, collective memory, and imagination. Rooted in the landscapes and folklore of her Bolivian culture, Marisol’s work oscillates between candid and staged, naturalistic and mythical.
Born in 1987 in Travnik, Bosnia and Herzegovina, she lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia. She holds a Master’s degree in Photography from the Academy of Dramatic Art, University of Zagreb, and a Bachelor’s degree in German and French Language and Literature. She is a visual artist working with photography as a conceptual and spatial medium. Her practice examines liminal and psychological spaces through constructed or subtly staged scenes, often drawing on theatrical strategies and elements of the familiar. Combining philosophical inquiry with subtle absurdity, her work destabilizes the familiar, using ambiguity as a tool for reflection while gently questioning perception, logic, and the structures that shape everyday experience. She has exhibited her work in numerous solo and international group exhibitions across Europe. She received the Audience Award at the HT Award for Croatian Contemporary Art at the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb in 2017 and 2019, and was nominated for the Award for Best Young Author at the Rovinj Photodays festival in 2012.
Related professionals
Other professionals that might be interesting
All professionals
Descriptiondd112333
Salvatore Vitale (b. 1986, Palermo, Italy) is a Swiss-based artist, director, and professor whose work explores the complexity of contemporary societies. Using expanded and speculative storytelling through mixed media techniques, he focuses on the politics of systems that regulate modernity and the impact of technological transformations.
Vitale is the Artistic Director of EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival and FUTURES Photography, both international platforms dedicated to contemporary photography. He also serves as a Professor at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, where he leads the Transmedia Storytelling Programme. Previously, he was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of YET magazine, an international photography publication.
Vitale’s work has received international awards. It is featured in several public and private collections and has been widely exhibited in museums and at festivals worldwide.
Ángel Luis González Fernández is a designer, artist, and curator supporting engaging visual arts practices, winner of Business to Arts David Manley Emerging Entrepreneur Awards 2011.
His work manifests through PhotoIreland, which he founded in 2010 to stimulate a critical dialogue on Photography. He devises curatorial projects placing conversations in the public realm around visual culture, critical thinking. These include events (PhotoIreland Festival, Halftone Print Fair, arts residency How to Flatten a Mountain, and New Irish Works), a cultural hub (The Library Project: Ireland’s Art bookshop, host to a unique resource library of photobooks and a productive arts programme), publishing projects that distribute inexpensive access to local practices, research projects (Critical Academy: examining contemporary art practices). He works collaboratively with a growing network of organisations, noticeably through ambitious Creative Europe partnerships.
During the Summer 2020 lockdown he launched the critical publication OVER Journal, now distributed globally. He received the Arts Council of Ireland’s Visual Arts Bursary to deepen research on the broad historical and specific artistic context of Photography in Ireland, to curate an ambitious survey exhibition in PhotoIreland Festival 2022 and to publish a series of publications on the matter. He regularly contributes to publications such as the forthcoming The Routledge Companion to Global Photographies, edited by Lucy Soutter, Duncan Wooldridge.
See some of his Graphic and Web Design work in the 100 Design Archive.
Newsletter
Want to stay up to date with the latest news and events of FUTURES?
Each month we share articles and interviews, upcoming Open Studios and educational opportunities.
By signing up, you'll join our community of artists and professionals committed to contemporary photography.
By signing up, you'll join our community of artists and professionals committed to contemporary photography.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.