The artists nominated by
Bienal Fotografia do Porto
in
2026
The Ci.CLO Plataforma de Fotografia / Bienal Fotografia do Porto nominations for the FUTURES Platform bring together five emerging artists: Eunice Pais (Mozambique/Portugal), Francisco Menezes (Portugal), Guillermo Vidal (Venezuela/Portugal), Jungeun Lee (South Korea) and Maria Peixoto Martins (Portugal).
Coming from distinct cultural backgrounds and artistic trajectories, the selected artists develop independent practices within the expanded field of photography and moving image. Their work engages critically with contemporary conditions shaped by visibility, displacement, materiality and power, addressing social, political and affective dimensions of the present. Through diverse methodologies, including documentary and archival strategies, performative gestures and image appropriation, these practices question how reality is constructed, mediated and inhabited, forming a constellation that foregrounds ethical positions of looking and reflects on the role of images in shaping our relationship with the contemporary world.
Eunice Pais develops a practice that brings together photography, video, sound and material processes as forms of listening and relation, operating in contexts where ecology, memory and labour intersect. Working across liminal spaces between archive and lived experience, her work resists closed narratives and extractive modes of representation, proposing an ethics of care through gestures of containment, opacity and material transformation.
Francisco Menezes works across photography, installation and sculpture to question the role of objects in the material and symbolic organization of the contemporary world. Situated between representation and presence, his practice exposes mechanisms of accumulation and fixation, using minimal formal operations to reveal the invisible infrastructures that shape everyday life.
Guillermo Vidal develops a photographic practice rooted in experiences of social invisibility, working in close relation with contexts marked by precarity and structural absence. Rejecting both spectacle and distance, his images operate at the threshold of visibility, proposing asustained ethics of looking grounded in proximity, presence and continuity.
Jungeun Lee explores experiences of displacement, care and unstable belonging, using photography in dialogue with performance and gesture. Her work brings together intimate and structural dimensions, family, domestic labour, migration and cultural inheritance, to trace processes of transformation and silent resistance, where the body becomes a site of memory and care.
Maria Peixoto Martins interrogates surveillance as a defining condition of contemporary life, working with appropriated and degraded images captured in contexts of control. Through irony and discomfort, her practice exposes the normalization of the vigilant gaze and places the viewer in an ambivalent position, revealing systems in which continuous exposure has become the norm.
Members of the jury:
Jayne Dyer - co-artistic director of the Bienal Fotografia do Porto
Virgílio Ferreira - founder and art director of the Photography Platform Ci.CLO and of the Bienal Fotografia do Porto
Vera Carmo - independent curator, lecturer and researcher
Projects nominations
Artist
eden levi am
eden levi am (b. 1992) is an artist, photographer, and queer activist based in Geneva. For several years they have developed a documentary approach that centres on activism and intimacy. Working primarily with analogue photography and video—and, more recently, performance—their practice offers a personal and affective view of the world that resonates with current social and political issues. From an intersectional feminist and decolonial perspective, their work addresses questions related to the body, gender, identities, and their representations.
They graduated from the Vevey School of Photography (CEPV) in 2018. Their work has been exhibited and published in Switzerland and abroad since 2017. It was recently featured at Swiss and international venues and festivals such as Verzasca Foto Festival (2024), Fesses-tival (Geneva 2023), Tom of Finland Art & Culture Festival (London 2023), Musée d’art de Pully (CH, 2017 & 2023), Urgent Paradise (Lausanne 2022), Forde (Geneva, 2022), Romantso Gallery Space (Athens 2020), Space Grotesk (Basel 2019), CPG (Geneva, 2019), La Nef (Jura, 2019), and others. Publications include Libération (2021) and Journal des Bains (2016–2025) as well as several exhibition catalogues.
In 2021 they were awarded the City of Geneva’s Documentary Photography Grant. The resulting project, Rivers, was published in 2023 as a monograph by Miami Books and presented in a solo exhibition at Halle Nord in Geneva, accompanied by two performances during the Fesses‑tival, a festival that promotes positive and inclusive visions of bodies, identities, and sexualities. Most recently, they presented their latest project, ZONE ROUGE RACINES, within the framework of the JOUPH (2025) programme at Espace Libre in Biel/Bienne.
Professional
Danaé Panchaud
Danaé Panchaud is a Swiss exhibition curator, museologist and lecturer specialising in photography. She has been the director of the Centre de la photographie Genève since 2022, after serving from 2018 to 2021 as director and curator of the Photoforum Pasquart in Biel, Switzerland. She trained in photography at the Vevey School of Photography before completing a bachelor’s degree in visual arts with a specialisation in curatorial practices at Geneva University of Art and Design. She later studied museology at Birkbeck, University of London, earning a master’s degree in 2017. She has held positions in several Swiss institutions in the fields of contemporary art, design and science, including the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, where she was a research associate from 2007 to 2012, the Gallery SAKS in Geneva in 2012-2013, the Fondation Verdan in Lausanne as scientific collaborator, and the mudac in Lausanne, where she was in charge of the public relations from 2012 to 2017. As a free-lance curator, she has curated exhibitions for several Swiss and international museums, independent spaces and galleries since 2012. She regularly writes texts for monographs of contemporary artists, exhibition catalogues, and thematic publications such as Flora Photographica, co-authored with William Ewing and published by Thames & Hudson in 2022. She was a lecturer at the Vevey School of Photography from 2014 to 2018, and regularly lectures at art and photography schools in Switzerland. In 2023, she joined the teaching faculty of the CAS in Theory and History of Photography at University of Zurich.
Artist
Laurence Rasti
Laurence Rasti was born in 1990 to Iranian parents in Switzerland. She studied photography at ECAL – University of Art and Design Lausanne (BA, 2014) and fine arts at HEAD – Geneva University of Art and Design (MA, 2019). Her projects often explore issues surrounding identity, visibility, legitimacy and representation. Drawing from the duality of her own cultural background, she examines Swiss and Iranian cultural codes and conventions in order to understand the influence of gender roles in society. The consequences of migration or the non-respect of fundamental rights is another strong focus of many of her recent projects.
Her book "There Are No Homosexuals in Iran" (Edition Patrick Frey, 2017) was shortlisted for the Paris Photo Aperture First Photobook Award, the Author Book Award of Rencontres d’Arles, and nominated as one of the 10 best photobooks of 2017 by the New York Times Magazine. Her work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions around the world, including "ReGeneration3" at Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, "Disruptive Perspectives" at Museum of Contemporary in Chicago and Photoforum Pasquart in Biel, "Iran Contemporary" at Fotohof Art Gallery in Austria, and several festivals including PhotoKatmandu, Athens Photo Festival and Tokyo International Photography Festival. She was the laureate of the Photographic Survey of the City of Geneva in 2019, and of the Photographic Survey of Canton Neuchâtel in 2022.
Artist
Sebastian Stadler
Sebastian Stadler is a Swiss-Finnish artist based in Zurich, Switzerland who works with photography, video and text. He studied photography at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and the Lausanne University of the Arts (ECAL). His work has been exhibited in national and international exhibitions, including at Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Photoforum Pasquart, Kunstmuseum Thurgau, Kunsthaus Baselland, Centre de la photographie Genève, Haus Konstruktiv Zürich, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen and the gallery Heinzer Reszler in Lausanne. In 2013, Sebastian Stadler received the Swiss Art Award, and in 2019 the Manor Art Prize St. Gallen. In 2021, his first monograph, A Close Up of a Large Rock, I Think, was published by Kodoji Press and was selected as one of the Most Beautiful Swiss Books. His work is part of several important public and private art collections, including Vontobel Art Collection, UBS Kulturstiftung, Maus Frères SA Collection, Geneva, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Kanton Zürich, Kanton Thurgau, Kanton St. Gallen and Julius Bär Art Collection.
Artist
Marco Frauchiger
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.
Artist
Mathilda Olmi
Mathilda Olmi is a photographer based in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she develops personal projects and is active as a portrait photographer for the media and cultural institutions. Her work as an artist is articulated around issues relating to ecology, agriculture and feminism. It often deals with the position of women in Western society and the representation of femininity, intimacy, home and maternity. She harnesses lyricism and poetry to portray political issues and positions, and to counter the violence of the world with a sense of wonder.
She graduated from the Vevey School of Photography (CEPV) in 2015. Her work has been exhibited regularly, primarily in Switzerland, since 2014. It has been part of group shows at Musée d’art de Pully (Switzerland, 2023), Festival Images (Vevey, 2014 & 2020), Photo Elysée (Lausanne, 2022), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin, 2023), Ferme-Asile (Sion, Switzerland, 2021), Photoforum Pasquart (Biel, Switzerland, 2015), Verzasca Foto Festival (Switzerland, 2021) and Festival international de mode, de photographie et d’accessoires (Hyères, France, 2022), among others. She has had three solo shows in Lausanne, in a gallery and two independent art spaces, between 2015 and 2022. Her work is part of the collection of Photo Elysée (Lausanne). She has published two monographs with the French publishing house FP&CF: "A bird in the hand" in 2017 and most recently "Rosa Canina" in 2022. She was selected for the Enquête photographique valaisanne [photography survey of the Canton Valais] in 2021 and was awarded a grant for emerging artists by Pro Helvetia in 2020.
Artist
Tim Rod
Tim Rod is a Swiss artist based in Bern, Switzerland. He studied art education at HKB – Bern University of Applied Sciences (BA, 2018), art history at Bern University (Minor, 2019), photography at Vevey School of Photography (CEPV, ES diploma, 2021) and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Contemporary Arts Practice at HKB – Bern University of Applied Sciences. His work often explores issues related to exile and habitat, rootlessness and rootedness, as well as memory, identity, belonging and travelling. His own roots and family history are one of the central elements of his practice and his research, alongside collective visual culture. While his practice remains strongly rooted in photography, his works often expand into site-specific multimedia installations. His work has been exhibited since 2018 in Switzerland and internationally since 2021. Recent exhibitions include "L’Été sans fin" (Festival Images, Vevey, 2020), "Genesis" (Hackney Downs Studios, London, 2021), Charta Bookfestival (Rome, 2021), Photobook Award Encontros Da Imagem (Braga, Portugal, 2021), and the European Photobook Month (Hongkong, 2022). He has been nominated or shortlisted to several major Swiss and international awards. His project "Don’t forget the Knifish" was awarded the special mention of the near.prize 2021. The same year, he won the vfg Young Talent Award for Photography with the project "À demain inshallah".
Artist
Zoé Elia Menthonnex
Zoé Elia Menthonnex, aka Really Bad Picture (b. 1996), is a Swiss and French photographer based in Lausanne. Her work, which oscillates between experimentation and visual narrative, explores the boundaries between the real and the imaginary through projects combining photography, illustration and visual poetry. Among other things, she has developed commissioned work in the world of music, capturing the raw energy of contemporary scenes while pursuing a deeply personal artistic approach.She graduated from École Supérieure de Photographie de Vevey (CEPV) in 2022, and her work has been exhibited in Switzerland since that year. She took part in PLA(T)FORM at Fotomuseum Winterthur in 2023, as well as in the 2024 edition of the KBCB, as part of a collaboration stemming from the Lumpen Station residency at Fotomuseum. Her work has also attracted international attention: her work was featured in the book Flora Photographica, edited by William A. Ewing and Danaé Panchaud and published by Thames & Hudson in 2022, with her series ZOMBIE.Through her images, Zoé Elia Menthonnex constructs a hybrid visual language, where the trivial and the sacred, the spontaneous and the reflective, the absurd and the symbolic intersect. Her instinctive approach, driven by a strong sensitivity to materials, textures and atmospheres, makes her work a sensory and emotional experience, always in tension between chaos and contemplation.
Artist
Mahalia taje Giotto
Mahalia Giotto, aka taje (b. 1992), is a Lausanne-based visual artist working across photography, performance, installation, and archives. Originally trained in international relations at the University of Geneva, they later turned to photography, earning a Master’s degree from ECAL/Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne in 2022.Their work is deeply shaped by their personal journey as a trans non-binary person. Fascinated by androgynous figures in animated series, taje experienced gender fluidly in childhood. However, adolescence imposed binary expectations that never felt right. Their transition, including starting hormone therapy in 2020, profoundly influenced their life and artistic practice.Among their notable projects, existential boner merges photography, collage, text, and scans to construct an intimate yet radical self-portrait. Studio portraits, vernacular snapshots, and handwritten annotations create a raw, urgent narrative—part personal history, part deconstructed archive. Their installations increasingly incorporate text and graffiti-like interventions, turning space into a site of both personal reflection and public confrontation. The project was exhibited at Images Vevey, in a solo show at SPBH Space in Milan, and won the Swiss Design Awards in 2024. It was published as a book by ECAL and SPBH in July 2023.Currently, taje is developing, on the verge of becoming completely forgotten, a three-part project examining masculinity as a force that is both protective and isolating.
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Bienal Fotografia do Porto
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