Vir Andres Hera’s practice stems from a multiplicity of narratives, languages and subjectivities. Alternating mediums as their projects unfold, the artist draws on currents of thought that affirm marginalised or racialised identities: the queer movement, Chicana and black studies. Favouring a collective approach, Vir Andres Hera works with researchers, activists, performers and shamans to reconstruct fragmented narratives.

Armenian-born Meri Karapetyan grew up in Yerevan, where between 2020 and 2022 she was profoundly affected by the conflicts in Artsakh. This has led the artist to deconstruct the notion of borders, using art as the way to «disarm» that notion and reveal what she sees as its main function: that of defining the undefinable. Her work uses a variety of materials such as rope, clay, copper, plaster and tar to give shape to an emotional and expressive approach.

Ines Katamso’s approach is both scientific and spiritual: she cultures bacteria to study their shapes but she also brings Balinese and Javanese mythology into play, with fantastic creatures drawn from animism and Hinduism. Ines Katamso is an Indonesian-French artist based in Bali, where she explores the island’s traditional culture as well as its contemporary issues, foremost among which is the pollution of the countryside. In response, she has turned to traditional craft techniques using recycled materials to create sustainable works.

Nadežda Kirćanski expresses herself primarily through drawing and installation. She explores the contrast between sociopolitical realities and the social, emotional, intellectual and material life of young people in Serbia. Her exploration of space, whether public or private, enables her to draw attention to contradictions and systems of conditioning or control in everyday life. Her approach produces a distinctive narrative, both personal and collective, centred on the reality in which she lives.

Sahil Naik is interested in what constitutes memory or truth. The artist borrows from natural history and architectural modernism to develop a practice that involves both dioramas – reconstructions of scenes used in natural history museums – and models. He takes his inspiration from architectural sites that have experienced cataclysmic events like fires, floods, or explosions, and reproduces what remains of them. His works are a mixture of reportage and rewriting as a means of restoring the traumatic memory of those places and people.

Matthias Odin investigates our relationship with familiar objects through works that evoke his own experiences. From his roamings in the city, where he made friends with people he had happened upon, he has kept souvenirs in the form of abandoned or salvaged objects that become components of his sculptures, assemblages and installations. Wandering around, meeting people, getting lost, selfconstruction and adaptation are his favourite subjects.

What unites Jennetta Petch and Szymon Kula is a shared relationship with materials. Working as a duo, the two artists explore the history and uses of materials, from ancient farm implements to contemporary sports equipment. For them, objects talk: they speak of the gestures that shaped them, the bodies that used them and the context of the societies that produced them.

Shivay La Multiple’s creations meld dream and reality. Their research focuses on devising and sculpting a coming-of-age story that begins in the Maroni River, then glides along the waters of the Congo, the Senegal, the Casamance and the Nile to the Itanda Falls in Uganda, the Douro in Portugal and the Lobe in Cameroon. There, the artist collects woody fruit: the calabash, a guardian of tradition, whose round shell holds water that would trickle away through human hands.

Anastasia Sosunova's work draws on personal experiences and the way they interweave with wider cultural, economic and spiritual structures. In particular, she explores the links that communities are forged around. Through a process of distortion that melds ancient mythologies, hybrid entities and Big-Brother society, she creates alternative forms of "contemporary folklore". Working with notions of household and belonging, these explore existence and coexistence, while developing a critical perspective on power structures and collective psychology.