ARTISTS’ STATEMENTS
The cowboy’s image of freedom masks a short, complex history. From 1865 – 1880, many were formerly enslaved men or Indigenous workers. Barbed wire ended open ranges; the myth began with Buffalo Bill’s shows. Today, the cowboy survives in rodeos, pop culture and identity debates. This project examines who the »real« cowboys are and how the figure shapes modern masculinity and gender discourse.
»About to Leave« is a reflection of the time my father spent in England. He arrived in 1990 proudly wearing my Grandfather’s suit, a privilege granted to the first generation of our family to leave Africa. 34 years later, he wears his tie, days after making the decision to return back to a happier life at home.
The photograph is from a long-form photographic project documenting our special father-son bond. Honing in on my father’s experience as a first-generation immigrant in the UK the project unravells themes of health, displacement and family care.
In Tanzania, boxing is gaining popularity, yet women have long been excluded. »BOXING QUEENS« follows young women from Arusha and Dar es Salaam who are breaking into the sport, aiming to go professional despite poverty and stigma. Their fights go beyond the ring—they battle for equality, recognition, and self-determination. This project highlights their strength and determination, portraying the ring as a space of empowerment and change.
Photographed in natural light after training, often in outdoor courtyards, the portraits are enhanced with gold leaf, celebrating each boxer as a radiant, goddess-like figure and symbol of hope.
The Kid Who Sits Next to You in Class (2022–ongoing) is a portrait series of young peoplebrought to Canada as children who live undocumented – without immigration or legal status. Their experience remains secret, even from close friends.
In the photos, flowers and personal items conceal their faces, protecting them from deportation while emphasizing their shared identity. Unlike their U.S. counterparts, DREAMers, undocumented youth in Canada lack legal protections or clear pathways, making them politically invisible. They face isolation and barriers to work, education, and housing.
This project creates a rare community for them, encouraging courage through visibility and hope for secure status, rights, and freedom. Presented as photographs and video installations, the work was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and Childhood Arrivals Support and Advocacy. Given Canada’s current political climate, the project’s significance has deepened.
Frei, a 22-year-old trans man from Aarhus, Denmark, faced isolation, depression and stigma.
At 13, he realized he didn’t fit gender norms. At 20, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and ADHD—delaying his access to hormones. »They act like they know me better than I do.«
This project offers a candid view of identity, mental health and the strength it takes to live authentically in the face of judgment and bureaucracy.
In Ilulissat, Greenland, climate change is altering daily life. Thinner ice forms late, melts early, and threatens travel and tradition. Dog sled routes vanish; sea ice no longer connects communities.
This series captures portraits and voices of Inuit residents reflecting on shrinking landscapes. Using glacier water-soaked Polaroids, the work lets the land alter the image – mirroring the fragile shift in the human-nature bond.
Irish poet and adventurer Danny Sheehy (*1951 – †2017) revived a forgotten tradition by sailing the Camino route in a naomhóg. Blending myth and memory, his journey ended in tragedy when the boat capsized near Spain. Captured in »The Camino Voyage«, his story lives on – a testament to the fragile line between past and present. This image is dedicated to his widow.
Mutterland is a fragmentary documentary photography project by Michel Kekulé exploring the social and personal fractures left by German reunification in East Germany’s provinces. It balances historical reflection with an intimate family narrative: Kekulé’s grandfather lost his craft as a knife maker after the fall of the Berlin Wall, while his mother left the GDR in 1990 and returned years later to a region marked by some of East Germany’s highest unemployment rates.
The people Kekulé documents embody ongoing struggles for identity and belonging amid the collapse of old systems. The deliberate black-and-white aesthetic connects to 20th-century social documentary traditions, emphasizing themes of loss, alienation, and uncertainty through visual reduction. This monochrome approach creates a temporal ambiguity, blurring past and present.
As a photographer socialized between East and West, Kekulé uses Mutterland not only to confront societal upheavals and the medium itself but also to trace his own roots. His work makes visible experiences of loss while honoring resilience.
»I am Logan. I am non-binary transmasculine. Becoming myself used to scare me – but now it’s almost like breathing. I’ve finally allowed myself to feel everything, good or bad. Freedom is now a word I know how to write. And soon, I’ll know how to say it too.«
In Belarus, the regime sees truth as its enemy, erasing evidence of repression and memories of national unity. By late 2024, 45 journalists and bloggers were jailed on political grounds, and independent media nearly destroyed.
I turned to photojournalism in 2020 to document the presidential elections and aftermath, driven by urgency to capture the truth – until my work forced me into exile. Over 35,000 protesters were detained, facing beatings and torture; 1,265 political prisoners remain imprisoned, including opposition leader Maria Kalesnikava and Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski. Since 2020, over 400,000 Belarusians fled to Poland, Lithuania, and beyond, many forced to rebuild their lives while maintaining ties to home.
The regime’s reach extends abroad, pressuring exiles and even prompting deportations from countries aligned with Belarus. Those still in Belarus live in fear; minor acts of defiance – like displaying banned flags or speaking Belarusian – are punished. Repression breeds survival strategies of indifference, as resistance seems futile.
The 2025 election was another sham, with little hope for change. Yet exiles remain committed to preserving Belarusian culture and the dream of freedom. Their struggle is part of a wider fight against global authoritarianism.
Alex Aina and Loi Xuan Ly met 14 years ago in a youth breakdance class in Ho Chi Minh City.
Now close friends, they’ve been dancing together ever since. This portrait captures their lasting bond through the art form that first brought them together.
In Roman law, ownership was defined as the absolute, perpetual, and exclusive full enjoyment of an object or corporeal entity. USUS was the right to use the object according to its nature, FRUCTUS the right to receive its fruits, and ABUSUS the right of disposition – to modify, sell, or destroy it. Museums originated over 300 years ago, when royal collections were opened to the public. They became key tools in constructing identity and defining the nation.
Given the colonialist origins of many collections, conflicts arise around historical narratives, knowledge creation, and collective memory. Revisiting the relationship between anthropology and museum collections gathered from a colonial past – often justified by a »rescuing« spirit – shows that for decades these spaces reinforced exoticism and distinction, tied to supremacist discourses. Museums create imaginaries; they are not neutral holders but have profited from exhibited objects. They hold power to instill respect, challenge prejudices, and revise history – or do the opposite. Is the museum concept universal? Let’s look behind the curtain.
Closely linked to ‘otherness’ and colonization is the risky representation of Black women in Western art history. Stereotypes of Black sexuality – bold, available, subservient – and the dynamics between white and Black women’s bodies perpetuate exoticism, cultural appropriation, and hierarchical differences – eternal Odalisques. Questions of spoliation, hegemonic narratives, race, and gender intersect with ownership. The urgent question remains: should plundered objects and identities be returned? Ownership, restitution, reparation, recontextualization – who has the agency to give, return, loan, adjudicate, or rename?
Francis O’Shaughnessy focuses his research on constructing the audacity to live, as expressed through his vision of portraiture.
With Plaque 240 (Model: Lauralie Galipeau Nguyen), the artist introduces suggestions that evoke his mixed cultural identity, without reducing this conceptual representation solely to cultural diversity. Through this work, he explores inner landscapes and the passage of time that shape who we are. He seeks to interpret the infinite facets that compose the human soul, paying close attention to the realms of ritual and intimacy. The wet collodion process – a primitive black-and-white photographic technique – enabled him to create this image on an aluminum plate 8x10. The image was produced using a bellows camera, followed by various manipulations in the darkroom. For O’Shaughnessy, this medium becomes a space of experimentation – not to capture what he thinks, but to understand what he thinks.
Since 1999, Czech artist Dita Pepe has created staged self-portraits with others – from friends to strangers – to explore identity, empathy, and the paths not taken. Each photograph is a shared diary entry, a role-play of alternate lives, and a reflection of connection, curiosity, and change.
This artwork channels a grandfather’s PTSD into material form – his »nightsweats« rendered in pins, scissors, and torn photographs. It explores memory, silence, and inherited trauma, asking how history lives on in us – and how healing might begin through art’s fragile reconstructions.
Christian and Alba stand at a street corner in Sueca, in Spain’s Valencia region. Framed by afternoon light and mundane urban architecture, the portrait speaks to youth, identity, and presence. It is part of The Idea of Success, an ongoing exploration of contemporary life in Spain and how ambition, belonging, and visibility play out in ordinary public spaces.
Without staging or intervention, the photograph captures a moment that is both fleeting and emblematic — an expression of how young people inhabit and shape their environments, even in the quietest of gestures.
The actual number of people affected by politically motivated adoption is still unknown.
Depending on the source, there’s talk of several hundred to several thousand children who were separated from their parents during the GDR era and given up for adoption. East German family law stipulated that parents should raise their children »to be active builders of socialism«. They had to »respect work«, »love the Soviet Union«, and »defend the borders – if necessary with armed force«. If parents failed to follow these instructions, the state had the power to revoke their right to raise their children. The subject of forced adoption is controversial to this day, and the process of coming to terms with injustice in the GDR is ongoing.
In the documentary work »Was geschehen und nie geschehen ist« (»What happened and never happened«), photographers Paulina Metzscher and Amelie Sachs, together with the author and filmmaker Eva Gemmer, address the respective family histories of those affected. What’s left behind? Grief? Loss? Hope?
The work combines a selection of artistic photographs and archive material with factual and poetic texts.
A long-term photographic exploration of grief and healing in a family in rural Ohio. Triggered by events in 2018 – divorce and death – the project chronicles the artist’s mother, a resilient caretaker, and his grandfather, who spirals into depression. As illness and mortality deepen, photography becomes a tool of understanding, closeness, and legacy.
A portrait of Fayza and the disappearing nomadic culture of the Beni Guil in Morocco.
As desertification and economic hardship force migration into town life, traditional livelihoods and oral culture vanish. Fayza’s personal story becomes a lens on the socioeconomic marginalization of young women and the cultural erosion of a nomadic identity.
I never met him, but he was always there, at the altar during Spring Festival, a ritual with burning incense, prepared food plates, and wine glasses. That’s the memory I’ve always had since I could ever remember.
This is the only photograph we have of him. He looks young, sharp, and cool, dressed in a western suit with a tie. Over time, I found more and more connections with him. His face bears some resemblance to mine after all. I suppose much of his nature could probably be found in me too. Now I have my own children, more than ever, I long to encounter with him. I dream to converse with him, more and more, day by day.
I project the photograph onto the backdrop in my studio. I dress myself up, just like him, in a grey western suit, white shirt, and a tie. The light projects his portrait out, some of it falling on me, I walk closer to the light.
They say light is also a substance, yet beyond time. Then maybe he could transcend into the same space and time with me now, together. The sensation of the light, almost palpable against my skin, drawing me nearer to him than ever before, for a second, I seemed to sense the very essence of his being, enveloped in the light, I miss you; I never met you, but I always wanted to meet you, click ...
This project is an intimate diary of encounters in my studio, portraits and reflections created between 2022 and 2024 in Bratislava.
It explores the lives of displaced Ukrainians – mothers and children, teenagers and the elderly, athletes and people with disabilities – who have faced the harsh realities of war. Some of my subjects remained in Slovakia, others returned to Ukraine, while some continued their journey to other countries. In the slightly abstract studio environment – completely detached from the outside world – we sat, talked and created photographs.
The sessions represented a kind of time capsule, a quiet space where a few fleeting moments of these permanently disrupted lives could be preserved, memories frozen in a time and place that felt very distant from the new reality that must be reckoned with.
Miao medicine, a unique branch of traditional Chinese medicine, plays a vital role in underserved areas through its holistic view of life and natural therapies. Due to China’s complex regional and environmental conditions, some communities, especially those in mountainous regions such as my hometown in Guizhou, often face limited access to modern medical care.
Miao doctors have become indispensable in these settings through their use of herbal remedies, acupuncture, and personalized treatments that offer physical healing and spiritual support deeply rooted in local culture.
Since 2022, I have been researching Miao doctors in my hometown of Qiandongnan, exploring the ongoing vitality of Miao medicine while also engaging with broader social and cultural dynamics. In contemporary society, the standardization of technology and systems often neglects individual and community needs. In contrast, Miao medicine’s emphasis on interconnected care, reliance on natural resources, and integration within the community offer an alternative perspective.
This approach is more than a solution, as it represents a value system that highlights harmony between humans and nature and acknowledges life’s complexity. Miao medicine reminds us that healing begins in relationship with the self, with others, and with the living world.
This work investigates family mythology and rituals as markers of continuity. The the photographic silhouette of my father with 22k gold leaf, his handwriting, his hand print are all loaded with symbols and narratives. They upend the normative family album, remaining deeply rooted in familial lineage yet still calling for a radical reconsideration of personal autonomy under the weight of inheritance.