Photo: Katalin Deér

Stefan Burger

Stefan Burger (*1977) lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. He studied photography at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHDK) from 1999 until 2003.

Over the past 25 years, Stefan Burger has developed a conceptual and eclectic practice in the fields of photography, film, and sculpture that examines the material, technical, and institutional conditions under which images are produced, reproduced, and exhibited.

His works have been shown in numerous international solo and group exhibitions, including at the Kunsthalle Bern, the Fotomuseum Winterthur, and the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart.
www.stefanburger.ch

Photo: Hannah Cooke

Hannah Cooke

Hannah Cooke (*1986) has been living and working in Karlsruhe since 2008. While studying media art at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG) and the University of Amsterdam, her art was already being featured in international exhibitions.

In her work she examines the structures and expectations of our society. How can norms be broken down? On which (power) structures are our systems based? Cooke observes, researches, and analyses new artistic contexts. To do so, she employs a wide variety of formats and media such as installation, performance, photography, and video.

Important milestones in her career to date includes solo exhibitions at the Museum Ostwall in Dortmund and the Kunstmuseum Heidenheim. She has also taken part in numerous international group exhibitions at institutions such as Belvedere 21 in Vienna, Mimosa House in London, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse in France, Chennai Photo Biennale in India, and most recently at Kunsthaus Baselland.
www.hannahcooke.de

Photo: Dominique Brewing

Anna Gohmert

Anna Gohmert (*1983) lives and works in Stuttgart. She studied fine arts at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart (ABK Stuttgart) and was a master student in the Weissenhof Program.

In her interdisciplinary artistic practice, Anna Gohmert works at the intersection of performance, installation, text, film, and artistic research. Her work explores how care, the body, and language construct relationships and how experiences of birth and death, visibility, vulnerability and political participation are inscribed within them.

She does not view her artistic praxis as an autonomous system, but rather as a relational field embedded in social, institutional, and political contexts. Another component of her work is collaboration and exchange with other artists, authors, and contemporaries – in particular with the collective Mothers*, Warriors, and Poets, which addresses collective modes of working, care labor, and the structural conditions of artistic production.

Anna Gohmert’s works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions as well as in institutional contexts in Germany and abroad. She has received numerous prizes, scholarships, and grants. In addition to her artistic practice, she teaches at the ABK Stuttgart and works in various educational and research settings.
www.annagohmert.de

Photo: Caragh Turing

Sophie von Hellermann

Sophie von Hellermann (*1975) lives and works in London, Margate (UK), and Karlsruhe. She studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1993 until 1998, where she was a master student under Dieter Krieg. She also attended the Royal College of Art in London and is a co-founder of hobbypopMUSEUM.

Sophie von Hellermann’s paintings evoke fables, legends, and traditional stories that are imbued with her subconscious rather than existing forms of representation. Her romantic, pastel-washed canvases are often installed to suggest complex narrative threads. Sophie von Hellermann applies pure color pigments directly to the unprimed canvas. The use of broad brushstrokes gives her paintings a sense of weightlessness. Her works sometimes draw upon current affairs, just as often as they incorporate the imagery of classical mythology and literature. This creates expansive imaginary places. In subject matter and style, von Hellermann contrasts fantasy with reality.

Her works have been presented internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Since 2022, Sophie von Hellermann has been Professor of Painting at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe.
www.kunstakademie-karlsruhe.de

Photo: David Payr

Christian Kosmas Mayer

Christian Kosmas Mayer (*1976) lives and works in Vienna. He studied at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar in Saarbrücken, the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and at the Glasgow School of Art.

As a visual artist, author, and musician, Christian Kosmas Mayer works at the intersection of different disciplines. His cross-media exhibitions and projects are the result of long-term artistic research and close collaboration with experts from various fields. They focus on a critical evaluation of history and the present by embedding evolutionary and natural processes within cultural-historical and scientific contexts. A central concern in Mayer’s work is the examination of archival and conservation practices as forms of history-conscious action. In his projects, the inconspicuous, forgotten, and obsolete undergo a transformation: they are converted into material artifacts, discursive objects, multimedia installations, and performative formats.

He is the author and designer of several books and co-editor of an art magazine (www.ztscrpt.net). He also plays and releases music in various constellations. Christian Kosmas Mayer’s works have been shown in various national and international institutions, and he has received numerous awards and scholarships.
www.christiankosmasmayer.site

Photo: Demian Bern

Mukenge/Schellhammer

Mukenge/Schellhammer consists of Christ Mukenge (*1988) and Lydia Schellhammer (*1992). The duo lives and works between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Germany.

Their work is influenced by various Congolese and Western painting traditions as well as contemporary popular culture. By co-signing their works Mukenge/Schellhanner blur common classifications of authorship, geographical origin, and gender. The duo has become an independent being with its own formal specificities and distinct aesthetic, a double-headed monster, shaped and deformed by the conditions of our present. Mukenge/Schellhammer expands its painterly approach across various media, including work with virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) and performance. The result is an interweaving of painterly, digital, and tangible spaces.

Mukenke/Schellhammer’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. In 2021/22, the duo received a scholarship from the Akademie Schloss Solitude, and in 2023 a scholarship from the Arts Foundation Baden-Württemberg.
www.mukengeschellhammer.com

Photo: Karolina Sobel

Diana McCarty

Diana McCarty is an artist and feminist media activist. McCarty is a proud Chicana from Albuquerque, she lives and works in Berlin and Karlsruhe.

Her interdisciplinary projects focus on art, gender and the politics of media. She is a founding editor of reboot.fm, Berlin’s free artists radio, and the faces-l online community. McCarty is active within the Red Forest constellation, realizing experimental events, audio, films and research. McCarty has received research grants from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM), BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, and the Kone Foundation, Finland.

Her current works revolve around decoding the colonial algorithm and is part of the Critical Faculties – BiPoC+ FLINTA* an Kunstakademien research initiative. She is professor of Time-Based Media and Performance (with Filipa César) at the HfG-Karlsruhe.
www.monoskop.org

Photo: Anahita Razmi

Anahita Razmi

Anahita Razmi (*1981) is a German-Iranian visual artist who lives and works in Berlin and London. Razmi studied media art at the Bauhaus University in Weimar and at the Pratt Institute in New York, as well as sculpture at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart.

She works with moving images, installations, photography, objects, and performance. In her artistic practice, she frequently employs strategies of appropriation as well as contextual, geographical, and ideological displacements. Questions of visual politics, power, representation, identity, and transcultural processes are central to her work, particularly in the shifts between the so-called “East” and “West.” Her artistic approach is rooted in material concerns, rather than the metaphorical ones.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She has received numerous awards and scholarships for her artistic creations.
Anahita Razmi teaches as a senior lecturer in the BA Fine Art program at Central Saint Martins, London, and is an associate fellow at the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN), University of the Arts London. In 2024/25, she accepted an interim professorship for Digital and Time-Based Art at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart (together with Prof. Heba Y. Amin).
www.anahitarazmi.de

Photo: Sebastian Heck, ato vision

Alex Besta

Alex Besta (*1983) lives and works as an artist and curator in Karlsruhe. She studied scenography, product design and art research at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design.

Alex Besta develops multimedia compositions and conceptual spaces. She transfers theoretical research and personal explorations into an artistic-abstract and physically experiential language. The sociological, scientific or poetic writings that serve as her foundation are reorganised by Besta and translated into soundscapes, objects, images or cinematic elements to culminate in an overall concept that embraces an entire space. An interest in the emergence of social orders and aesthetic phenomena, always with regard to their historical and social context, is an essential component of her art and can be found in all of her works. 

Her projects have been displayed numerous times, such as on the art platforms of ato, Berlin/Karlsruhe, at Kunstverein EBENE B1, Frankfurt am Main, at the ßpace Project Room, Karlsruhe, at theartape, Karlsruhe and at the Videonale Bonn. In 2021, she received a scholarship from Künstlerhaus Eisenhammer and is currently a fellow at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris. She is currently a scholarship holder at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris.
In addition to her artistic activities, she has also been working as the artistic director and manager of the Kunstverein Wilhelmshöhe Ettlingen since 2024.
www.alexbesta.net

Photo: Lizzy Ellbrück

Lizzy Ellbrück

Lizzy Ellbrück (*1990) lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the Technical University in Berlin and Berlin University of the Arts as well as the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design.

IHer artistic practice is characterised by dedicated oscillation: She juggles with language, manoeuvres through disciplines, balances objects and attributions and critically engages with the act of making, the gesture of displaying and the politics of the gaze.
She develops her polymorphic practice through interdisciplinary approaches that are influenced by processes of visual culture, pop culture phenomena and aesthetic experiences, and mostly follows material and site-specific parameters. They utilise parafictional strategies, practices of deconstruction and methods of reinterpretation. Her works are often based on the perception of everyday motives, habitual gestures and established myths, and express hyper-precise to dilettantish techniques and speculative scenarios.
Current projects explore (metaphorical) nesting on the basis of traces of locality and souvenirs of familiarity or include the emancipatory opportunity for action in domestic space as a productive site.

Lizzy Ellbrück’s work has been shown in solo presentations at the Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe and the Kunstverein Bruchsal, as well as in international group exhibitions. She will take up her scholarship at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris this coming fall of 2024.
www.lizzyellbrueck.com

Photo: Germain Matviuk

Grischa Kaczmarek

Grischa Kaczmarek (*1992) lives and works in Karlsruhe and Freiburg. He studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe under Helmut Dorner and at the ENPEG La Esmeralda in Mexico City. In 2022 he graduated as a master student of Vivian Greven in Karlsruhe.

Grischa Kaczmarek examines colour in its appearance and physicality, combining complex, sonorous and childlike elements. Through compositional processes, pictorial spaces and collective stories are combined in new ways. In this way, the recognisable is abandoned in favour of new imagery.

His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions, including in Karlsruhe, Berlin, Zurich, The Hague and Mexico City. Grischa Kaczmarek has already received several awards, including the Landesgraduiertenstipendium in 2021.
www.instagram.com/grischa_kczmrk

Photo: Iden Sungyoung Kim

Iden Sungyoung Kim

Iden Sungyoung Kim (*1991) lives and works in Karlsruhe, Berlin and Seoul. She studied Media Art at the Karlsruhe University of Art and Design. She also received her bachelor’s degree in painting at Ewha Womans University in Seoul and took part in a guest study programme at the Berlin University of the Arts.

Her works provoke controversial discussions about socio-political irony in history and enable critical reflection on current problems. In her research-based artistic practice, she examines the political polarisation in technological development from a historical perspective, which is interwoven with the current economic and political system. Her artistic language coincides with the diachronic examination through visual media.

Iden Sungyoung Kims Arbeiten wurden international präsentiert, u. a. in London, Berlin, Stockholm, Kyoto, Karlsruhe, sowie Venedig. Iden Sungyoung Kim’s works have been presented internationally, including in London, Berlin, Stockholm, Kyoto, Karlsruhe and Venice.
www.idenskim.art

Photo: annalehrer

Anna Lehrer

Anna Lehrer (*1988) lives and works in Stuttgart.  She studied Architecture at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, during which she also took part in the Photography class under Ricarda Roggan. She also spent time studying in Tallinn, Hangzhou and Beijing. Anna Lehrer works with photography, sculpture and installation.

Her works deal with the perception of two- and three-dimensional spatial arrangements and explore different forms of spatial memory. 

In architectural design, functional processes, ideals, representative motivations and social orders are spatialised. Buildings function as memory storages that make collective and personal remembrances spatially accessible. Her site-specific installations aim to sensitise the physical-spatial process of perception and to reflect on this experience. Her photography, though, appears in her works as a mediator between two- and three-dimensional spatial arrangements. Sculptural approaches are explored within the spatial dimensions of her photographs.

Anna Lehrer’s work has been presented in group exhibitions at Kulturpark Dettinger, Esslingen district, Museum Folkwang, Essen (UG), in the Schaulager at Galerie EIGEN+ART , Berlin, F/Stop , Leipzig and at the F/Stop Festival for Photography in Nuremberg, among others.
http://www.instagram.com/anna__lehrer

Photo: Eva Scholl

Kükelhahn

Kükelhahn (G. Kühnhardt Alvares, *1987) lives and works in Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart and throughout Germany. Kükelhahn studied German and Japanese Studies at the University of Trier, photography at the Seian University of Art and Design in Ōtsu, Japan, Communication Design (BA) at Hochschule Mannheim as well as Exhibition Design (MA) at Hochschule Düsseldorf.
The question — the interview — is the sculptural material with which Kükelhahn creates and examines the environment for a critique of representation, for transcultural grey areas and a collective transfer of knowledge. On this basis, they work with intimacy, empathy and ‘cuteness’. Proceedings that are experienced together take place and form subversive sculptures of participation — counterbalancing discriminatory social reproductions of the present. Technically speaking, Kükelhahn has so far developed site-specific, spatial encounters such as quiet rooms, podcasts, photo books, bakeries and picnics.
Since 2020, their field of research has focussed on the context of art itself. Kükelhahn is interested in the various stages and intersections of artists, their lives and their work. Kükelhahn explores the concept of dreaming in order to speculate on other conditions for collaborations and then realise them in the future.
Kükelhahn has collectively and individually received the Solitude Fellowship from the Akademie Schloss Solitude (2023/24), the Mannheimer Demokratiepreis (2022), recognition from aed Neuland (2021) and the Baden-Württemberg Scholarship (2015), among others.
www.instagram.com/kuekelhahn

Photo: Marc Doradzillo

Mirjam Walter

Mirjam Walter (*1993) lives and works in Freiburg. She Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg under Michael Hakimi and Susanne Kühn and completed a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting under Jutta Koether at the Academy of Fine Arts Hamburg.

Mirjam Walter works with various media that take shape through the body, or more specifically, the hand. The theme that can be found throughout her artistic work is life within the human body. For example, the performance “I, A HYPHEN”, which was created in 2024 in collaboration with Julia Hainz, deals with the (re)production of violence through hegemonic language and poses the question of whether poetic/painterly or physical expression can counteract the injuries caused by language.

Mirjam Walter has been involved in the production of various performances, group exhibitions and collaborative projects in institutions such as Kunsthalle Basel, Kunsthalle Hamburg, the Kunstverein in Hamburg as well as Off-spaces such as the Golden Pudel Club, Hinterconti Hamburg and Edel Extra Nuremberg. In 2021, she conceived the exhibition “unheim” together with Tomasz Skibicki at the Kunstbunker Nuremberg. In the same year, her first artist’s book “I AM NO BODY LIKE A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME” was published by Hamman von Mier Verlag.
www.mirjamwalter.com/de

Photo: Julia Hainz

Carmen Westermeier

Carmen Westermeier (*1985) lives and works in Stuttgart. They studied Fine Arts and Media Art as well as Exhibition Design/Scenography and Art Education at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design and the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg.

Westermeier’s interdisciplinary artistic practice encompasses a wide range of media including photography, performance art, video, sound and virtual reality. They often work with site- and room-specific installations to create an immersive experience for visitors.

In terms of content, Westermeier primarily examines the interrelationships and interaction of various social, cultural and political discourses that shape our understanding of identity, physicality and society. A great interest is placed in how these discourses are shaped in the present and in history and how we can reinterpret and deconstruct them through our artistic efforts.

Westermeier’s work focuses on norming processes, demonstrating that discourses on the body and identity are really discourses of power that are often characterised by sexist, racist and classist implications. The discrimination against marginalised bodies is reflected in the capitalist image of a body that is frequently influenced by instructions on how much exercise and a healthy lifestyle is necessary and how it should conform to a certain assigned aesthetic. One constant is the departure from one’s own body, whereby autobiographical narratives are often unfolded and the structural problems are always addressed as well.

Westermeier has worked as a duo with Julia Hainz numerous times since 2014. They are currently working together on the performative artistic research project “The Symbiotic Approach”.
www.thesymbioticapproach.com
www.carmenwestermeier.de

Videostill: Havîn Al-Sîndy

Havîn Al-Sîndy

lives and works in Berlin, Düsseldorf and Kurdistan. She studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart and at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and graduated as a master student in Stuttgart in 2018. Simultaneously, she studied biology and chemistry at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Havîn Al-Sîndy works with sculpture, painting and moving images. She concentrates on the artistic and scientific processes of making things visible, finding languages for that which difficult to say as well as the ambivalences in the production of visibility itself. Her
working method is processual and often collaborative. Again and again, dialogue takes place across generations. Personal as well as collective memories and their reconstruction, localisation and delocalisation are themes that she presents performatively and through installations in order to bring viewers into the spatial dimensions of her sculptures and to encourage them to interact with her works. This creates spaces for encounters with experiences that do not necessarily have to be one’s own, but which invite for the unlearning of things supposedly taken for granted. Havîn Al-Sîndy’s relationship with sculpture is expressed in a consistency of working with materials such as lime, plaster, clay, earth or massive paper webs.

Havîn Al-Sîndy’s work has been shown often, and in 2021 she received a scholarship from the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg. She currently teaches at the Braunschweig University of Art.
www.al-sindy.de

Foto: Belaid Le Mharchi

Anike Joyce Sadiq

Anike Joyce Sadiq (*1985) lives and works in Berlin. She studied Visual Art under Birgit Brenner and Intermedia Art under Discoteca Flaming Star at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart.

Her artistic practice balances along the lines of performative-poetic and minimalist conceptual approaches. In her installations she uses video, sculpture, sound, music and text. Her works interweave questions revolving around marginalised positions within a dominant culture with the specific historical, social and spatial factors. She explores various dimensions of representation, both artistic and political. This is in regards to embodied knowledge and an examination of the role of image politically.
Her work is also concerned with the ways in which social dynamics, intersectionality and perspectives of differences within institutional structures are (not) addressed. An important part of her practice is the collaboration with other artists, musicians and performers.

Anike Joyce Sadiq’s work has been shown in different national and international exhibitions, and she has been awarded several prizes and scholarships. www.anikejoycesadiq.net

Photo: John Loc

Fabian Treiber (*1986) lives and works in Stuttgart. He studied Fine Arts at the State Academy of Art and Design Stuttgart under Reto Boller.

Fabian Treiber has, formally speaking, dedicated himself to the subject of the interior, still life and landscape and uses these to question subjective projections, the prototypical nature of things, typologies and our perception of reality in his works. He specifically makes decisions in his paintings formally and not narratively. In doing so, he provokes a conscious break, thus declaring what is supposedly false to be the quality of the painting – with the effect that his works somehow might not seem quite right, but are nevertheless exactly right.

Fabian Treiber has received numerous prizes and scholarships for his artistic work and has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally.
www.fabiantreiber.de

Photo: Katrin Esser

Charlotte Eifler

Charlotte Eifler (*1985) (*1985) lives and works in Karlsruhe and Leipzig. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, the Berlin University of Arts and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

Charlotte Eifler is an artist and filmmaker and works with film, performance, installation and XR. Her artistic projects deal with the political representation of technology. With a focus on queer-feminist approaches and elements of science fiction, Eifler explores processes of image production and visualisations of alternative futures.

Charlotte Eifler’s works have been shown internationally in renowned exhibition venues and as part of various biennials and festivals. She is a member of numerous networks, including unlearning canon_intersectional teaching in Art & Design, Digital Critique, feat.fem, FACES – gender, technology, art and G-Edit. She has also been teaching media art at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, where she helds a professorship for Mixed Realities since 2024.
www.charlotteeifler.xyz

Photo: Sofia Hultén

Sofia Hultén

Sofia Hultén (*1972) lives and works in Berlin and Stuttgart. She studied at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (UK), at Sheffield Hallam University (UK) and at the Berlin University of Arts under Rebecca Horn. In 1997/1998 she was granted a DAAD Scholarship.

In her sculptural work, Sofia Hultén explores different catalysts that disrupt established patterns of perception and uncover unknown dimensions in everyday life. Questioning the interplay between time and matter is a recurring theme throughout her work. The root of her artistic pieces are usually everyday objects which she examines for traces of a previous life, reworks and rearranges into a new context.

Sofia Hultén was a visiting professor of sculpture at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin and has held numerous teaching positions at national and international academies and schools, such as at the Valand Academy in Göteborg. From 2017 to 2019 she was an interim professor of sculpture at the Braunschweig University of Art, and from 2021 to 2022 a adjunct professor of the class Image Space Object Glass at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle. She has been a professor of sculpture at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart since 2023.

Sofia Hultén has exhibited her work in numerous national and international solo and group exhibitions. In 2011 she was awarded the Moderna Museets Vänners Skulpturpris. www.sofiahulten.de

Photo: Nadine Bracht

Raphael Sbrzesny

Raphael Sbrzesny (*1985) lives and  works in Berlin. He studied visual arts, sculpture, classical music , experimental musical theatre and theory in Stuttgart, München, Bern and Paris.
Raphael Sbrzesny promotes an expanded concept of performance and sculpture and develops multimedia installations in which he uses videos, costumes, texts and wearable pieces that can also be utilised as musical instruments.   
In his work he employs the body as an instrument and setting for subjective history. With this in mind the artist developed a large number of figures such as the “Eumel”, the “König”, “Sophie” and the “Principal Boy”, around which complex arrangements were constructed. The concept of becoming and using sculpture in a performative way is crucial to his work.

Raphael Sbrzesny’s works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. From 2018 until 2023 he was professor of Rethinking Interpretation in Sound, Performance and Conceptual Artistic Practice at the University of the Arts Bremen. 
www.raphaelsbrzesny.com

Photo: privat

Helen Feifel

Helen Feifel (*1983) lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe under Meuser and Daniel Roth.

With the aid of various media and techniques, Helen Feifel explores different artistic practices in her work. With playful nonchalance, the artist combines references to performance and body art, abstract painting, photography and sculpture. In recent years she has focused on the principle of colorfully painted photography, with which she has developed an independent pictorial form.

Helen Feifel’s work has been shown nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions. She taught painting at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin from 2022 to 2023.
www.helenfeifel.com

Photo: Dominik Bednarek

Kalin Lindena

Kalin Lindena (*1977) lives and works in Berlin and Karlsruhe. She studied at the Braunschweig University of Art under Hartmut Neumann, Johannes Brus and Walter Dahn.

Kalin Lindena works with painting, installation and performative elements, photography and video. She assembles her sculptures and wall artwork from found objects and self-designed elements. The artist always transforms her exhibition space into stage or film-like settings; her “extras”, figurine-like sculptures on wheels, convey the possibility of movement and dance. The foundation of her works are often note fragments from pieces of music, which she then integrates into her pieces.

She has been awarded numerous prizes and awards and has taken part in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Kalin Lindena has been a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe since 2014.

Photo: Cristina Gómez Barrio

Laura Vanessa Galeano Ochoa

Laura Vanessa Galeano Ochoa (*1992, Bogotá, Kolumbien) lives and works in Stuttgart. She studied performance art at the ASAB in Bogotá and completed the MFA programme Body, Theory and Poetics of the Performative at the Stuttgart State Academy of Fine Arts.

Her works focus on exploring the possible relationships that are created between artist and observer when they are face to face without any other spectators watching. Her artistic practice is comprised of these two positions. In works such as Mantrailing (2019), Reflection (2019), Private (2020) and Duet (2021), Galeano Ochoa explores the everyday, intimate, personal, private and individual as factors that make up the collective body.

Together with other artists in Stuttgart, she founded La Fuchsia Kollektiva e.V in 2019.
www.lauragaleano.com

Photo: Rosa Zettl

Rosa Violetta Zettl

Rosa Violetta Zettl Rosa Violetta Zettl (*1989) lives and works in Heidelberg. She studied visual arts as a meisterschüler under Johannes Spehr at the Kunsthochschule Kassel until 2018 as well as sculpture and installation at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn, Estonia, and art history and aesthetics at the University of Kassel.

The study of biological and social connections stands as the basis for Rosa Violetta Zettl’s installations, drawings and well-balanced assemblages. Found objects are combined together with handcrafted sculptures made of ceramics or plastics to form a fine collection. The syntactic creations evolve to become fragile installations that encompass hierarchical structures, archives and symbioses.

Her works have been displayed internationally in numerous group and solo exhibitions, including those at the Neuer Wuppertaler Kunstverein, Heidelberger Kunstverein, Estonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Tallinn, Warte für Kunst, Kassel, Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, L40, Berlin and Kreuzberg Pavillon, Berlin. In addition to other accomplishment, she was awarded with a scholarship from the Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn and won first place at the Young Sculptor Award in Tallinn.
http://www.rosazettl.com

Photo: Josephine Opitz

Lennart Cleemann

Lennart Cleemann Lennart Cleemann (*1990) lives and works in Stuttgart. He studied architecture in Hannover, Aarhus, Basel, and Stuttgart. He took part in Reto Boller’s art class at the Stuttgart State Academy of Fine Arts, which ultimately led him to find his artistic style.

He is currently a stipendiary at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart and explores ideas and concepts from “home”. His work combines space and materials. Through the construction and abstraction of rooms, furniture and playing equipment, he explores his environment and tries to gain an understanding of its processes. His studio is a place of necessity. It becomes the physical stage for the inner self, absorbing moods, dust and sweat. Observing the day-to-day changes of this intimate space is an exploration of the self.
www.instagram.com/lennartcleemann/

Photo: Anita Ackva

Judith Milz

Judith Milz Judith Milz (*1989) lives and works in Marseille and Karlsruhe. She studied at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design and Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig.

In her work, Judith Milz explores and develops narrative possibilities: sculptural, performative, photographic, journalistic. She is drawn to the incidental and mundane, the situational and anecdotal. As a result, her work always sways between that which is routine, private, personally remembered and told, and what is socio-politically important. When the artist approaches and processes themes for her practice, the image of a catalytic converter or flow heater might lend itself as an obvious metaphor. These pieces often include performative qualities.

Most recently Judith Milz has become increasingly involved in private and public archives. Her involvement in a place of artistic research significantly influences her work, which are often developed in a site- and context-specific way.

In 2019 she began focusing on creating an artistic language for Inter-German history; an ongoing project based on her ten years of working as a transcriber.

Judith Milz has already received several scholarships. In 2020 she was awarded a scholarship from the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg, and as of November 2022 she will be on scholarship at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris.
www.judithmilz.com

Photo: Lisa Bergmann

Karolina Sobel

Karolina Sobel Karolina Sobel (*1987) lives and works in Karlsruhe. She studied at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. She also has a master’s degree in urban studies from the Technical University Darmstadt, studied social sciences at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris as well as visual arts at the Iuav University of Venice.

Her interests include different modes of representation of social issues such as identity, the process of building communities, social exclusion and hierarchies. For her work, she looks for other methods of presentation that allow her to expand further on multiple levels of discourse. In utilising various mediums with a documentary approach, the line between fiction and reality is blurred. She uses photography as a tool for visual research in her work.

In 2020 Karolina Sobel was a scholarship recipient of the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg, and in 2021/22 she was awarded a scholarship from the Cité internationale des arts in Paris. She has been a member of the Archive of Public Protest since 2020.
www.karolinasobel.com

Photo: Jonathan Mink

Jacob Ott

Jacob Ott Jacob Ott (*1992) lives and works in the High and Upper Rhine area. He studied at the Freiburg School of Art, Design and Popular Music, the Stuttgart State Academy of Fine Arts, and at the Basel Academy of Art and Design.

Jacob Ott works with a variety of media – from sculpture, assemblages, painting and installation to film, sound and performance. The style of his work is influenced by his exploration into the habits and symbols that shape social arrangements and institutions. Much of his work deals with the fundamental elements of art production and the individual components and structures of the institution of art itself. Through simple, seemingly illogical interferences and a denaturalisation of the natural, his work offers a possible reflection on the often arbitrary or violent divisions and rules that go hand in hand with the increasing civilisation of our world.

His works have been shown in numerous exhibitions in, for example, Basel, Freiburg, Leipzig and Mexico City.
www.jacobott.de

Photo: Gin Bahc

Gin Bahc

Gin Bahc Gin Bahc (*1985) lives and works in Karlsruhe. He studied painting at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe.

The basis of Gin Bahc’s work is influenced by her interest in social issues as well as the behaviour of people within their social environments. Her work questions the growing media overload and the apparent loss of control over one’s own life. Different determinants analyse power and control structures and gain a larger spatial language. Exposure and veiling, humiliation, self-determination and power are important themes here. Her drawings are the starting point for installations and performances that confront the audience with a flood of associative images.

In 2019/20 Gin Bahc was on scholarship at the Cité internationale des arts Paris, and in 2021 she received a scholarship from the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg. She has been teaching at the Kunsthochschule Kassel since the 2022 summer semester.
www.ginbahc.com

Photo: Marlene Glawe

Nils Weiligmann

Nils Weiligmann Nils Weiligmann (*1988) lives and works in Karlsruhe. He studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe as well as is in Tianjin (China) and Minnesota (United States of America). He was a meisterschüler under Leni Hoffmann.

Nils Weiligmann’s works are a mix of objects and site-specific installations. The ruinous touches he brings into the materials shape and define his works. The objects wear and tire throughout the creation process. They develop an allure that repels at the same time.

The parasitic installations ‘claw’ their way into architecture, begin to ‘encroach’ and redefine spaces. In doing so they not only undermine the original use of the location, but also demand new behaviour from the viewers.

His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions in, for example, Karlsruhe, Freiburg, Basel, Cologne and Minneapolis.
https://www.instagram.com/nls__int

Photo: Tommy Støckel

Antonia Low

Antonia Low (*1972) lives and works in Berlin and Stuttgart. She studied visual communications at the Münster School of Design and simultaneously, fine arts under Ulrich Erben at the University of Fine Arts Münster. She completed a Master of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

The stimulation of realistic spaces and rehearsed perceptions through installations and processual interventions is the direction her sculptural, conceptual and artistically explorative practice takes. Reflections, poetic experiences and the concurrence of diverse realities emerges alongside axes of vision, visual superimpositions, excavation and displacements.

Low’s installations and interventions have been shown in renowned galleries including the K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, the Palazzo Altemps National Roman Museum, the Bonn Museum of Modern Art, the Kunstverein Braunschweig and the ISCP New York.⁣
She has received numerous awards, scholarships and has also participated in international residency programmes.⁣
She has been professor of interdisciplinary projects at the Stuttgart State Academy of Fine Arts in since 2019.

www.antonialow.com

Photo: Dimitris Savvaidis

Valentina Karga

(*1986) lives and works in Berlin and Hamburg. She studied Architecture at the University of Volos.

Her artistic practice lays somewhere between art, design, research and architecture. She combines elements of participation and speculative experiments that question prevailing social and physical infrastructures in energy, economy, and sustainability.

Valentina Karga is a founding member of the Collective Disaster, an interdisciplinary group that works in the interstices of architecture and the social realm.

She was a fellow at the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Science/Graduate School at the University of the Arts Berlin, a Saari Fellow in Finland, a resident at the Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Art in Singapore and was awarded the Vilém Flusser Residency for Artistic Research. Her work has been shown at the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens, the Athens Biennale, the first Thailand Biennale, the Konsthall C, the Hippolyte Gallery in Helsinki and in a major exhibition curated by the Whitechapel Gallery, among others. She has been a professor at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg (HFBK) since 2018.
www.valentinakarga.com

Photo: Christoph Westermeier

Martin Pfeifle

Martin Pfeifle (*1975) lives and works in Düsseldorf. He studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Tony Cragg and was a meisterschüler under Hubert Kiecol.

Martin Pfeifle’s installation works are usually created in situ and incorporate the surrounding space. This way, the perception of space interacts with deliberations on sustainable materials used in sculpture.

Amongst other recognitions he was awarded the Villa Romana Prize in Florence and has received sponsorships from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the city of Düsseldorf. His works have been shown in exhibitions at home and abroad, including projects presented in public spaces. He was a scholarship holder of the Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn and the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg and received the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Sculpture Prize. Since 2021, Pfeifle has been a professor for the department of “Körper Raum Struktur” at the Peter Behrens School of Arts/University of Düsseldorf.
www.pfeifle.de

Photo: privat

Katrin Ströbel

Katrin Ströbel Katrin Ströbel (*1975) lives and works in Marseille, Stuttgart and Rabat. She studied fine arts and literature and, while concentrating on her artistic work on the relationship between text and images in contemporary art, completed a doctorate in art history. She is a mother.  

Her drawings, site-specific works and installations are based on a critical questioning of the social and geopolitical conditions that define our everyday social life. The artist deconstructs gender relations and female stereotypes in various drawings and collages. Her work also deals with cultural codes and (visual) languages as well as colonialism, migration and displacement, and shows how strongly gender and geopolitics are interconnected.

Since 2004 Katrin Ströbel has worked in Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Peru, Australia and the United States of America among other places. She has been taking part in international solo and group exhibitions for around fifteen years. In 2013 she began teaching at the Villa Arson, École nationale supérieure d’art in Nice, France, and in spring 2023 she became a professor for drawing at the Stuttgart State Academy of Fine Arts. Since 2013 Katrin Ströbel has been working together with Moroccan artist Mohammed Laouli on “frontières fluides – fluides boundaries”, a multimedia project that addresses migration and transit between Europe and Northern Africa.
www.katrin-stroebel.de

Photo: Eberhard Reuß

Myriam Holme

Myriam Holme (*1971) lives and works in Mannheim. She studied fine arts at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe under Meuser and Andreas Slominski.

Holme’s art creates a fine connection between painting, sculpture and installation. Her broadened concept of painting is based on the experimental and the processual, though both should be seen as originating from the material. This results in paintings that can be thought of as expansive and unfinished, that do not settle into the existing, but remain in constant motion.

Myriam Holme has received numerous awards and her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Since 2008 she has held multiple visiting professorship and teaching positions. Together with Philipp Morlock, she founded and runs Einraumhaus c/o and is also co-creator of the new art venue barac – Kunst/Labor/Soziales in Mannheim, which opened in 2020. www.myriamholme.de

Photo: ©insistere

Ulf Aminde

Ulf Aminde Ulf Aminde (*1969) is an artist and filmmaker. He studied at the Berlin University of the Arts under Lother Baumgarten.

His productions often negotiate and/or are shown in public spaces. Many of them deal with and initiate collaborations and collective learning environments. In his cinematic work he negotiates the potential of self-empowerment through the performative camera, alienation effects in the documentary, and strategies of subjectification. His film works are usually characterised by intensive collaboration with the protagonists and experimental settings. His most recent works deal with social movements, memory and resistance.

His works have been exhibited in many renowned institutions, including the Berlin Biennale 4, the Havana Biennial, KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, Volksbühne am Rosa Luxemburg Platz, nGBK Berlin and Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, MARTa Herford Museum, Steirischer Herbst, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Kestner Gesellschaft Hannover, Kunstverein Heidelberg and Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei. Ulf Aminde is also professor of performative spaces at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin. There, he initiated the *foundationClass for artists who have had to flee their home countries and are affected by racism.
www.ulfaminde.com

Photo: Talal Khoury

Rabih Mroué

Rabih Mroué Rabih Mroué (*1967) lives and works in Berlin. He studied theatre at the Lebanese University in Beirut.

His artistic work encompasses theatre, visual arts and literature. Working at the intersection between private and political history, media criticism and concepts of authorship, his performative compositions question our tendencies of seeing and speaking.

Mroué is the editor of The Drama Review and co-founder of the Beirut Art Center. He was a fellow of the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures” at the Free University of Berlin and regularly directs and performs at the Münchner Kammerspiele, Kampnagel Hamburg and the Hebbel Theater in Berlin. His work has also been shown in numerous international exhibitions, including at La Kunsthalle Mulhouse, Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in Madrid, Kunstverein Stuttgart, BAK Utrecht, Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona, documenta 13, Performa New York, Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern. In 2020, Rabih Mroué received the Ernst Schering Foundation Prize for Artistic Research – the awards collaborator KW Institute for Contemporary Art presented his solo exhibition Under the Carpet in 2022.

Photo: Annett Kroenert

Annette Kelm

Annette Kelm (*1975) is an artist and photographer who lives and works in Berlin.

Kelm is one of the most important contemporary photographers in Germany.

Her conceptual photographs focus on the conventions of seeing and displaying, the constructed nature of images, and the disclosure of the circumstance of their production. She documents modern everyday culture in her still life portraits, landscape and architectural photographs. Removed from their original context and transferred to new constellations, the motifs elicit associations that reveal artistic, historical and socio-cultural references.

Her work has been shown internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at the Museum Frieder Burda | Salon Berlin, the Fosun Foundation in Shanghai, the Kunsthalle Vienna, the Kestner Gesellschaft Hannover, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, MoMa in New York, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art Vienna, the Museum of Contemporary Art Rome, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the Kunsthalle Hamburg and the Kunstmuseum Solothurn. kkkk Annette Kelms Arbeiten wurden vielfach ausgezeichnet und sind in namhaften Sammlungen vertreten. Im Wintersemester 2021/2022 hatte sie eine Gastprofessur an der HfG Karlsruhe inne.

Photo: Kyungju Kim

Agnes Müller

Agnes Müller  (*1989) lives and works in Stuttgart. She studied art at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar including a year abroad at the Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul, as well as philosophy at Saarland University. In 2019/20 she was a meisterschüler under Katharina Hinsberg.

The subjects of her work in the field of performance and video are mundane, simple actions – pedestrian movements – as well as repetitive and continuous sequences of activity. She stages these in a simplified manner by means of a clear, visual language far from one of dramaturgical suspense. Müller often incorporates the public into her works as pictorial elements, testing the image boundaries and their limits. An essential part of her practice is wandering around – strollology – as well as observing everyday phenomena, arrangements and dynamics of bodies in public space.

Agnes Müller has taken part in numerous artist residency programmes, including at the Field Institute Hombroich in Berlin and in Stuttgart. She received funding for her projects on a regular basis.
www.agnesmueller.com

Photo: Gergő Magashegyi

Boglárka Balassa

Boglárka Balassa   (*1991) lives and works in Karlsruhe. She studied fine arts and painting at the University of Pécs in Hungary, the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel, and at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe.

Boglárka Balassa’s multimedia artwork is often characterised by the exploration of materials and a depiction of temporality. They are based on the observation of breathing. The handwoven pieces used in her expansive installations are ‘coloured’ by unconscious impulses and the current state of the mind, and only then are they woven into one entity. Woven materials have a life cycle: they become old and worn, like all living things – for the artist they symbolise temporality and transitoriness.

Boglárka Balassa’s work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and she taken part in artist residency programmes in, for example, Villány, Hungary.
www.bogibalassa.wixsite.com

Photo: George Õnishi

Wataru Murakami

Wataru Murakami  (*1983) lives and works in Berlin. He studied art history at the Sophia University in Tokyo and photography and media art at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. Throughout his life he has been confronted with both Japanese and Western cultures  – European and American specifically. The differences that exist between the two is what shapes his work.

The primary medium Murakami uses for his prints, booklets and installation art is photography. Currently his focus is set on urban space, capturing seemingly ordinary objects and observations in his personal surroundings that relate to history, social existence and the trends of our time.

Works by Wataru Murakami have been exhibited in Tokyo, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Leipzig, Düsseldorf and Naples among other places. In 2018, he was a fellow of the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg.
www.watarumurakami.com

Photo: Miriam Wieser

Anas Kahal

Anas Kahal Anas Kahal (*1985) lives and works in Freiburg im Breisgau. He first completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Damascus and subsequently transferred to the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe. There, he studied under Helmut Dorner and Kalin Lindena and took part in the meisterschüler programme in 2016/17.

His experimental working method is characterised by the experimentation of using different planes and the resulting image overlays as well as a combination of physical objects and video projections. The interaction between the moving images within a room is questioned. An important component for the artist is the play of lights and shadows, brightness and darkness in analogue and digital. Technology is a key factor in his work.

In addition to taking part in exhibitions in Germany as well as internationally, Anas was awarded with a residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris in 2019.
www.anaskahal.com

Photo: Thomas Georg Blank

Thomas Georg Blank

Thomas Georg Blank  (*1990) lives and works in San Diego and Darmstadt. He was first trained in cultural and media education before studying art at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe and in Mexico City.

Oscillating between research and speculative interpretation, Blank’s artistic projects explore how spatial and customary representations of individual and collective imagination influence the world we live in and vice versa. By creating multidirectional, spatial narratives he offers viewers a foundation for a reconfiguration and change of perspective.

His works and performative interventions have been part of numerous exhibitions, including in the House of Electronic Arts Basel, Historical Museum Frankfurt, Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Blue Star Contemporary and C/O Berlin. His work has received several awards and in 2018/19 he was a DAAD scholarship recipient for the Center for Human Imagination at the University of California San Diego.
www.thomasgeorgblank.de

Photo: Jonas Zilius

Susanne Kriemann

Susanne Kriemann Susanne Kriemann (*1972) She studied in Stuttgart under Joseph Kosuth and Joan Jonas and took part in the Programme de recherche at the Beaux-Arts de Paris.

Susanne Kriemann’s artistic practice is characterised by a broad understanding of photography. With this extended notion, she reflects on the world as a photographic recording system for specific sociohistorical processes. Her working methods range from research in archives to fieldwork and the use of different photographic recording and printing methods. In addition to a number of publications on her own work, she has published seventeen artists’ books since 1998.     

Susanne Kriemann’s work has been shown internationally in renowned exhibition venues and at various biennials and festivals. She has also participated in numerous artist residency programmes and was an advisor at the Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht until 2017. Together with Aleksander Komarov she founded the residency programme AIR Berlin Alexanderplatz. Since 2017 she has been working as a professor for photography at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design.
www.susannekriemann.info
Interview with Susanne Kriemann

Photo: Jeremiah Day

Jeremiah Day

Jeremiah Day  (*1974) lives and works in Berlin and Amsterdam. He studied art at the University of California in Los Angeles and subsequently completed a residency programme at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. In 2017 he earned his PhD at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam for his practice-based project renewing the exploration of art’s role in our society.

In his research-based works Jeremiah Day combines photography, text, live performance and improvised movement to illuminate the history of individual places and events that are embedded in larger historical contexts.  In the last two decades he has concentrated almost exclusively on dance, working regularly together with the pioneer of postmodern dance, Simone Forti. 

His installations, performances and lectures have been shown at, among others, the Kunstverein Baden (2020), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2017), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2014) and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2012).
www.thisisarcade.art/artists/jeremiah-day

Photo: Christiano Clunez

Karsten Födinger

Karsten Födinger (*1978) works and lives in Berlin. He studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe under Meuser and Günter Umberg and completed his apprenticeship as a meisterschüler in 2009.  

His work, mostly constructed using simple  building materials, lays somewhere between architecture  and sculpture. In addition to large sculptures  for interiors and indoor spaces,  Karsten Födinger’s work is  characterised in particular by sc ulptural interventions  in public spaces. Their location and its historical and cultural context always play a major role the pieces.

His works have been shown in numerous solo exhibitions, including at Kunstverein Mönchengladbach (2018), Antenna Space in Shanghai (2015) and Palais de Tokyo (2011). He was awarded the Baloise Art Prize, Art 43 Basel Statements sector in 2012. In 2012 he was awarded with the Baloise Art Prize, Art 43 Basel Statements.
www.foedinger.de

Photo: Daniel Laufer

Daniel Laufer

Daniel Laufer Daniel Laufer (*1975) studied at the Braunschweig University of Art under Birgit Hein, Marina Abramovic and Walter Dahn and completed his meisterschüler education in 2004.
In his video installations he explores film aesthetics. Using various special effect techniques from film history he creates a theatre of perception that plays with language and writing, scenery, painting, time and performance. His installations allow the viewer to enter the space, to be part of the production process and complete the intermedial artwork.

His works have been shown nationally and internationally, including at Artists Space in New York, Bonn Museum of Modern Art, Jewish Museum Frankfurt, Jewish Museum Berlin,
Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, Hamburg, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin.
www.daniellaufer.info

Photo: Marc Doradzillo

Schirin Kretschmann

Schirin Kretschmann Schirin Kretschmann (*1980) lives and works in Berlin and Munich. She studied art education, liberal arts and German at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe, the ENPEG Esmeralda in Mexico City and at the University of Freiburg.

In her artistic practice, she moves between the poles of installation painting and processual work forms. In addition to works in public spaces and in the context of art in architecture, she has realised exhibitions in international institutions and has been awarded numerous prizes and scholarships. Schirin Kretschmann is regularly active in various interdisciplinary research contexts and curatorial projects and is investigating painting in the expanded field of action as part of an artistic-scientific PhD project at the Bauhaus University Weimar. She has taught at international art and design schools and is professor of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich since the 2020/21 winter semester.
www.schirinkretschmann.de