SARA ARANGO FRANCO (COL)
Lives and works in Medellin (Colombia), 1986
Sara Arango Franco is a data scientist and research associate at the Maroon Institute. She has been an urban sustainability activist in Medellín, Colombia, and has worked as a researcher at EAFI University, Purdue University, and the University of Chile. She holds a master’s degree in urban informatics from the Center for Urban Science and Process (CUSP) at New York University and a bachelor’s degree in mathematical engineering from EAFI University (Colombia).
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands 2022
ARIANE ARLOTTI (CH)
The artistic research work carried out by Ariane Arlotti has its roots in photography and video. Her initial interest in portraiture and auto-portraiture led her to explore the human body to the very limits of abstraction, culminating in Le Corps Politique (2008) which consisted of unchecked images of political men and women. Her latest project, Destination Checkpoints (2013-2015), took her around Europe interviewing people on themes of security aesthetics and bringing them face to face, via a mobile video installation, with tools of repression and security and control apparatus currently in operation in the West Bank.
Participated in: MATZA Amboy 2015
MOUNIR AYOUB (TUN, CH)
Mounir Ayoub is a Tunisian architect, journalist and architecture critic. He founded the Laboratoire d’architecture (LA) that works on architectural and landscape projects, territorial studies, as well as editorial and curatorial projects throughout Europe, the Arab world and the Indian Ocean region. In 2021, they were the curators of the Swiss Pavilion at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale. He is also a regular contributor to several architectural magazines.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands Nairobi, 2023
LÉOPOLD BANCHINI (CH) ET DANIEL ZAMARBIDE (CH) (BUREAU A)
Founded by architects Leopold Banchini and Daniel Zamarbide, BUREAU A is a multidisciplinary platform that aims to blur the boundaries of research and projects taking on architecturally related subjects, whatever their nature and status.
BUREAU A is profoundly rooted in architectural culture and history, which for them is a vast field of exploration related to the construction and installation of environments for specific purposes. The bureau’s activities extend to include a wide range of programmes ranging from architecture and landscape design to scenography, installations, and self-constructed initiatives.
Participated in: MATZA Amboy 2016 and MATZA Meyrin 2019 (Léopold Banchini)
KARIM BEN AMOR (TUN)
Karim Ben Amor is an architect in Tunis and founder of Atelier 13. Karim Ben Amor’s passion for the sea and shipbuilding has nurtured his fascination for materials that place him in a universe where the manipulation of texture and shapes allows him to gain an understanding of space and its articulations. For him, the combination of technological and theoretical intelligence can produce highly contemporary products.
Participated in: MATZA Kerkennah 2017
TOM BOGAERT (BEL)
In another life, Tom Bogaert was a lawyer with Amnesty International and the UN. In 2004, he left the world of international law and moved to New York to work as a visual artist. As an artist he regularly exhibits in Europe, the United States and the Middle East. Since 2012, Tom Bogaert has been living and working in Geneva, where he concentrates on artistic projects in the Middle East.
Participated in: MATZA Kerkennah 2017
MAXIME BONDU (FRA)
Maxime Bondu, born in 1985, lives and works in Gaillard, near Geneva. After beginning his studies in Art History and Archeology at the University of Marne la Vallée in France, he graduated from the Fine Art school of Brest in 2009. His works focus on the notion of information, speculation and similarities, and contains a collaborative and a curatorial aspect. He co-founded Monstrare, and since 2012 has been a leader of the Monstrare Camp, a community experiment into a cave site of 30,000 m2 in Dampierre sur Loire in France. Since 2015, he has been developing Bermuda, a mutualized studio project at the French-Swiss border. Maxime Bondu is represented by Jérôme Poggi Gallery.
Participated in: MATZA Amboy 2016, MATZA Kerkennah 2017 and MATZA Aletsch 2017
FELIPE CASTELBLANCO (COL)
Born in Bogota (Colombia), lives and works in Basel (Switzerland), 1985
Felipe Castelblanco works with the materiality of meta-spaces formed by contemporary natural and cultural phenomena, by atmospheric pollutants and vast networks of traffic and migration, by the uprooting of cultural identities and transnationality to experimental geographies that compromise the contradictory movement of capital, ideologies, bodies and resources across the planet. By understanding public space as a fundamentally fluid dimension that also contains the near and far, the invisible and the Other, Felipe Castelblanco rethinks the function, form and agency of public art and situated practices.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands 2022
FRÉDÉRIC CHOFFAT (CH)
Frédéric Choffat is a fiction and documentary director whose work has long addressed migration and identity issues. These questions are an integral part of his work: through photographs, in Bosnian refugee camps in Croatia in 1993, through short movies (A Nedjad (Pardino de oro, Locarno 1998), through full-length movies (La Vraie Vie est Ailleurs (1996), Mangrove (2012), both of which have won awards) and also through theatre with Julie Gilbert, Outrages Ordinaires (2011 – 2012) (Ordinary Insults), which combines theatre and cinema, harshly recounting the tragic destiny of migrants thrown on to all the roads of exile. In 2015 he filmed a television documentary, Terminus Brig – the story of a Syrian family turned away from Switzerland. In 2016 the movie received the Louise Weiss Award from the Association of European Journalists. In March 2016 he released a new documentary, NON ASSISTANCE, which had its world premiere at the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights.
Participated in: MATZA Amboy 2016
WISSEM EL ABED (TUN)
Wissem El-Abed is a visual artist and holds a doctorate in plastic arts and art sciences from the Sorbonne. His artistic work affirms the ability of art to mediate between the imaginary and assimilating the violence and paradoxes of today’s world. He has held a series of solo and group exhibitions and has participated in various international contemporary art fairs.
Participated in: MATZA Kerkennah 2017
LAURENCE FAVRE (CH)
Laurence Favre’s work falls within contemporary fields of identity, the relationship of individuals to their environment, and the construction of collectivememory. She explores these through film, photography and words, inspired by people and environments she comes across. The porous border between “fiction” and “reality” plays a central role in her approach to image making, as a playground in which to explore human experience and social living, both critically and poetically.
Participated in: MATZA Aletsch 2017 and MATZA Meyrin 2019
MOUFIDA FEDHILA (TUN)
Moufida Fedhila is a Tunisian plastic artist, director and producer. Her work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world. Her works are included in several private and public collections. Moufida Fedhila will release her next film “AYA” in 2017, a fiction inspired by a true story. She lives and works in Paris and Tunis.
Participated in: MATZA Kerkennah 2017
YANN GROSS (CH)
He lives and works alternatively between Switzerland, Spain and the Amazonian forest.
Yann Gross is a Swiss artist working with photography, video and installation. Inspired by anthropology and ethnobotany, Yann explores, often in an offbeat way, how communities shape their identities, give in to escapism and model their environments.
Participated in : MATZA Edgelands, Medellín 2022
KATHARINA HOHMANN (CH)
Katharina Hohmann was born in Switzerland, grew up in Italy and studied Fine Art, Sculpture and Installation in Berlin. She works as an artist and exhibition curator in various projects and interdisciplinary circles. In her artistic practice she focuses primarily on temporary installations in public or institutional spaces, which she transforms through discreet manipulation, often simulating reality. As her installations are always connected with the spaces themselves, a research phase is important to focus on historical, political and social circumstances which are integrated into the exhibited work. Numerous publications have appeared with NGBK, Berlin, Merve and Revolver publishing, and more recently with Les Presses du Réel in cooperation with HEAD – Geneva. Since 2007 she has directed the Construction, Art and Spaces program at the Haute École d’Art et de Design, HEAD – Geneva.
Participated in: MATZA Amboy 2017
MOUNA KARRAY (TUN)
Mouna Karray is a Tunisian photographer artist. For more than 10 years, she has been working on personal and identity issues. After the revolution, she travelled her country to “give voice” to places and everyday objects. As an artist she seeks to go beyond appearances and pre-determined usage, to recover the complexity of the spaces (domestic or urban, intimate or public) she encounters.
Participated in: MATZA Kerkennah 2017
VALENTIN KUNIK ET GUILLAUME DE MORSIER – KUNIK DE MORSIER ARCHITECTES (CH)
Kunik de Morsier Architectes was founded in Lausanne in 2010 by Valentin Kunik and Guillaume de Morsier. United by a shared interest in critical and committed architecture, in their work they explore urban issues as well as issues concerning the renovation and adaptation of buildings or programmatic planning. They pursue an open and multifaceted approach to architecture and urban planning. It is not confined to any one field. Each space can become a manifesto, and each construction takes on a crucial role.
Participated in: MATZA Amboy 2015 and MATZA Aletsch 2016
SYOWIA KYAMBI (KEN)
Lives and works in Kenya.
Incorporating photography, video, sculpture and performance installation Syowia Kyambi’s approach takes aim at the politics of the time as well as its legacy today. What is remembered, what is archived, and how we see the world anew. History collapses into the contemporary through various objects and sounds including mythical characters that simultaneously embody mischief, disruption and hurt. She opens her gullet like a pelican and try to digest the intangible. Rooted in her practice is a deep connection to land, earth and home.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands, Cúcuta 2022
VANESSA LACAILLE (RE)
Lives and works in Switzerland.
Vanessa Lacaille is an architect and landscape architect from Reunion Island. In 2013, she founded Le laboratoire d’architecture with Mounir Ayoub. Their work in Europe and Africa covers multiple fields: social architecture and landscape, collaborative territorial studies as well as editorial and curatorial projects. Vanessa Lacaille was co-curator of the Swiss pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Biennale in Venice. In 2022, she will be a Visiting Professor at EPFL.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands, Cúcuta 2022
THIERRY MAEDER (CH)
Thierry Maeder is a PhD student in urbanism and spatial planning at the University of Geneva. His work focuses on a geography of cultural policies. In 2015 he published a study of Lausanne’s new museum hub and the issues surrounding large-scale cultural facilities. His current doctoral research analyses the transformations of artistic public commission and how it articulates with urban planning and the production of public space. Besides his academic activities, Thierry Maeder has worked for the Geneva Contemporary Art Fund, and regularly collaborates with a private sector urban planning office.
Participated in: MATZA Amboy 2017
ONYIS MARTIN (KEN)
Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya, 1987
Experimenting with a wide range of materials, Martin explores the human condition and the global geopolitical interface, through the lens of human trafficking, migration, corruption and displacement. In addition, he explores issues related to communication, the rapidly changing technological environment and the consumerism that surrounds it. Using his personal experience as a starting point, he interweaves individual and collective experiences highlighting the similar experiences people have in different places around the world. In his most recent series of works, Talking Walls (2016), Martin has expanded his exploration of how information is dependent on and influenced by freedom and social structure in the rise of consumerism.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands, Medellín, 2022
JÉRÔME MASSARD (CH)
Jerome Massard is an artist, curator, cultural activist, graphic designer and adult trainer. A graduate in critical studies (CCC) from the Geneva University of Applied Arts, he is conducting work on the status of the independent art scene in Geneva. He is president of the committee of Forde – a contemporary art venue since 2006, and of the Vélodrome association – a self-regulated artistic and artisanal centre between 2010 and 2015. As a member of the KLAT artists’ group, he has taken part in numerous exhibitions and opened several art venues in Geneva, including Shark and the Broom Social Club. Jerome Massard is also one of the coordinators of BIG,
Participated in: MATZA Amboy 2015
EMMANUEL MOTTU (CH)
Artist and engraver Emmanuel Mottu defines his work thus: turning shit into gold and vice versa. Absorbing images and throwing their skeleton into relief to highlight their shadows. Bridging a gap between subconscious and reality. Retrieving the invisible part of the world around us. As cultural activist and member of the Epicerie de l’agonie in Geneva, his work often addresses the idea of reasserting ownership of a space, through occupied buildings, clandestine bars and the Cité des Bars. Emmanuel Mottu is also the technical director and team coordinator of the Geneva centre for engraving.
Participated in: MATZA Aletsch 2016
OGUTU MURAYA (COL)
Lives and works in Nairobi (Kenya), 1986
With a body of work rooted in and informed by oral practice, Ogutu Muraya is a writer and playwright. In his work, he explores new forms of storytelling, seeking to merge socio-political aspects with the belief that art can challenge certainties. After studying International Relations at USIU-Africa, he graduated in 2016 with a Master’s degree in Theatre Arts. His texts have been published in numerous magazines, his performances and stories presented in several theaters and festivals around the world.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands, Medellín, 2022
SHABU MWANGI (KEN)
Shabu Mwangi was born in 1985 and began practicing art in 2003. He lives and works in Mukuru slum where he established the Wajukuu Art Project in 2013 with a deep conviction that his work could highlight the lives of the disadvantaged minorities in his community. Deeply concerned by society’s inequality and our lack of empathy for people with different social, political, ethnic and religious beliefs, his work seeks to examine human behavior and our collective amnesia.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands Nairobi, 2023
JOAN OTIENO (KEN)
Joan Otieno is a Kenyan artist currently living in the Lucky summer estate of Nairobi and works from her studio which is located in the sLums of Korogocho. Joan works with recycled materials and turns them into two dimensional artworks, three dimensional art installations and functional outfits that are worn on runways and even during street exhibitions and photo shoots.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands Nairobi, 2023
SANDRINE PELLETIER (CH)
Lives and works between Lausanne and Cairo (Egypt), 1976
From Lausanne to Vienna, from Beirut to Cairo where she settled shortly after the beginning of the Arab Spring, Sandrine Pelletier witnesses the noise of the different national political waves. As a privileged witness to moments of calm and fury, she adapts her relationship to time and life by immersing herself in the stories of places and people. A contextual immersion which is accompanied each time by a risk-taking where the experimentation finds its full meaning and influences her productions durably.
Participated in: MATZA Aletsch 2018 and MATZA Edgelands 2022
LAURENCE PIAGET (CH)
Laurence Piaget-Dubuis is an artist, graphic designer and photographer from canton Valais in Switzerland. She uses the visual arts to express invisible realities, create meaning and arouse emotions in a tension of convergence between aesthetic and ethical research. She uses pictures to relate stories that are allegories of a larger one: that of Humanity. Her area of experiment is that of contemporary issues as a mirror of society and man’s relationship with his environment. In an age of transformation and convinced that culture enables us to be more aware, to strengthen democracy and sharpen consciences, the artist is committed to transitioning to a sustainable and positive future.
Participated in: MATZA Aletsch 2016
MARGARITA PINEDA (COL)
Lives and works in Medellin (Colombia), 1982
Margarita Pineda is interested in relationships to cities on a 1:1 scale. The contexts in which she intervenes are often triggers for her production. The dynamics encountered define a language specific to each place and influence the development of her interventions. The location, the utility, the materials and the memory of these spaces are invested and used as tactical elements to build a work, notably through the display, putting into perspective the social and economic changes of these spaces. Margarita Pineda develops projects for public space and intervenes regularly in museum and gallery institutions.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands, Medellín, 2022
VALENTINA PINI (CH)
Born in 1982 in Ticino, lives and works in Zürich (Switzerland)
Valentina Pini’s artistic practice revolves around the perception of the matter. In her own way with a mixture of humour and rigour, the artist juxtaposes illusion and reality. Her sculptures show delicate and intricate visions of apparently quiet and irrelevant object. Trading a fine line between the recognizable and the indeterminate, the installations, rigorous and essential in form, allow the observer to be enchanted, thanks to their transformative power that redirects everyday objects to new and improbable purpose. Pini’s work combines expressive mediums such as sculpture, installation and video and sits somewhere between chemistry and magic, where creation is not flagrantly confesses but subtly suggested.
Participated in: MATZA Aletsch 2018 and MATZA Edgelands, Medellín, 2022
RONALD PIZZOFERRATO (VEN)
Was born in 1988 in Caracas (Venezuela), lives and work in Bern (Switzerland).
Ronald Pizzoferrato is a visual artist and photographer, resident in Bern since 2014. His works are the result of prolonged designethnographic research with a visual focus. Pizzoferrato documents and investigates social phenomenon and conflicts in his native Venezuela. Additionally, he works on international projects related to identity, migration, violence, and decolonization.
Participated in : MATZA Edgelands, Cúcuta, 2022, MATZA Edgelands Nairobi, 2023
ADRIAN PRECIADO (VEN)
Lives and work in Venezuela.
Adrián Preciado is an Art Historian and Visual Artist from the University of Los Andes. His research focuses on the relationship between traditional arts and new technologies and topics such as borders and migration.
Participated in : MATZA Edgelands, Cúcuta 2022
NATHALIE RODACH (CH-FRA)
A self-taught plastic artist, Nathalie Rodach tells stories, weaving bonds between the spiritual, the organic and the trivial. Through the materials she uses, such as thread or a tree branch, she explores the paths of life, embroidering the questions posed by individuals, and interweaving reflections on memory with an exploration of the idea of identity.
Participated in: MATZA Kerkennah 2017
FLURINA ROTHENBERGER (CH)
Flurina Rothenberger is a Swiss photographer/artist raised in Côte d’Ivoire and based in Abidjan and Zurich. Her work draws on photography and writing, combining a research-based approach with highly collaborative projects in the form of books, zines, installations and workshops. She is a lecturer in the Faculty of Advanced Studies in Photography in Vevey, and a program manager at Artlink.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands Nairobi, 2023
DELPHINE RENAULT (FRA)
Delphine Renault was born in Paris in 1984 and studied Fine Arts in Lyons, Rennes and at the HEAD in Geneva. Her work focuses above all on space, representation and perception. Her installations are created in situ, on a human scale, and offer a reinterpretation of pre-existing or imported architectural elements. She takes inspiration from the various rhythms and patterns of a landscape to form a trail punctuated by moments of contemplation and wandering, along which the visitor’s role is that of point of reference in, and enabler of, the landscape.
Participated in: MATZA Amboy 2016 and MATZA Aletsch 2017
JULIE SEMOROZ (CH)
Lives and works in Geneva (Switzerland), 1984
Julie Semoroz is a singer, sound artist and artistic project manager. She sculpts sound using several sources such as field recordings, live microphones and her voice with software and hardware elements. She proposes sound pieces as inner journeys into the unconscious where one penetrates shadowy areas. Her work questions the relationship of the individual to mechanical and organic time in her bodily practices and questions post-industrial consumerist society and new technologies. In a search for ecology in the sense of «habitat», Julie Semoroz asks the question of how to inhabit our bodies and our lives in society.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands, Medellín 2022
MATHIAS SOLENTHALER (CH)
Following his studies in political science, Matthias Solenthaler applied himself to documentary film making, organizing musical events and assembling cultural venues. His recent projects have addressed the role and impact of culture and artists in the production of a city. To improve his knowledge of urban questions, for the last two years he has been following a postgraduate course (MAS) in sustainable urban planning. He is currently working on his thesis and on setting up a cultural cooperative, and would like to spend the coming years practicing a form of town planning that is at once critical, sustainable, and close to citizens.
Participated in: MATZA Amboy 2016
ANGELICA TEUTA (COL)
Lives and works in Medellin (Colombia), 1985
With simple, handmade, and low-tech elements, Angélica Teuta creates dreamlike worlds that develop as poetic landscapes. Her work is not focused on these theatrical atmospheres in themselves but rather on the multiple processes necessary for the activation of the objects present, often borrowed from everyday life, then immersed in a complex, illusory, and narrative universe. Her longest and ongoing project called «Emotional Architecture» combines interests in vernacular and nomadic design, DIY furniture, and wooden structures, designing micro-spaces within other spaces. Utopia, childhood memories, zen environments, and working with live plants are also themes prevalent in Teuta’s work.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands, Medellín 2022
LAURENT TIXADOR (FR)
Laurent Tixador was born in Colmar, and currently lives and works in Nantes. Since 2001, Laurent Tixador has regularly participated in monographic and group exhibitions in France and abroad. In 2013, he won the COAL Art and Environment Prize.Laurent Tixador revels in putting himself to the test in extreme and offbeat situations.
Participated in: MATZA Aletsch 2017
ALEXIA TURLIN (CH)
Alexia Turlin presents herself as a cross-over artistic agency named Milkshake Agency. Its artistic activity takes very diverse forms and involves multiple uses. She creates murals, furniture and garden layouts, playful and utilitarian sculptures, videos and printed matter distributed through many networks. Her “art for living” find one of its most accomplished expressions in this exhibition. She creates a complete environment, with carpeting on the floor and partially covering the walls, poufs, multicoloured lamps and furniture elements. Visitors can sit comfortably to watch videos, or to attend the various evening events, round tables, performances and other one-off events organized throughout the exhibition.
Participated in: MATZA Aletsch 2017
MARIE VELARDI (CH)
Marie Velardi’s artistic production takes various forms – installations, sketches, videos, audio recordings, text – but all follow a similar theme: a relationship to different temporalities. Projections over time are the way she connects past, present and future and how she examines the state of the Earth today. Through her creations, collaborations and research, Marie Velardi attempts to give shape(s) to a memory of the future.
Participated in: MATZA Amboy 2015 and MATZA Aletsch 2016
SANTIAGO VELÈZ (COL)
Lives and work in Medellìn (Colombia), 1972.
The observation of water in multiple contexts around the world has led Santiago Velez to study the relationship between this element and contemporary issues such as human migration, climate change, mining or the economy. With the intention of pointing out the relevance of water in specific events, he approaches these territories through explorations and investigations which, often following disruptive gestures, are
then translated into installations, videos, photographs and sculptures.
Participated in : MATZA Edgelands, Cúcuta 2022
WANJIRU NGURE, [M] / [MONRHEA], (KEN)
Wanjiru Ngure, [M] / [MONRHEA] explores art through music production, sound design, creative coding, DJing and tutoring in the realms of bass, techno, underground hip-hop and experimental music. She is guest tutor at SEMA on experimental approaches, and participated in a three months residency at The MIST. Recently she was actively spearheading initiatives under The Rhealistic Collective such as TCHNO and BYTE.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands Nairobi, 2023
NABALAYO WATTIMAH (KEN)
Nabalayo Wattimah is a Nairobi based producer, singer-songwriter and performer; channeling indigenous Kenyan ancestral energies to create electronic music.
Her music blends ethereal soundscapes and rich local folk idioms with light airy vocals in order to transport her audience to other realms of existence. Her artistic practice is driven by the values of storytelling, archiving and showcasing the beauty of diversity.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands Nairobi, 2023
NGUGI WAWERU (KEN)
Ngugi Waweru is a multimedia and self-taught artist who was born in Nakuru and grew up in Nairobi. He started experimenting after observing his friends that were practicing and that had already cultivated a passion and skills in art. Ngugi resolved to embrace it full time. He signed up for a community talent search and emerged the winner in the printing category with a woodcut print artwork. Ngugi is one of the founders of Wajukuu Arts.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands Nairobi, 2023
SABINE ZAALENE (CH)
Sabine Zaalene, a Swiss artist, also has a university education in archaeology and art history. Her ongoing research entitled “Current Antiquities” is supported by the ArtPro Scholarship of the Canton of Valais. She enjoys exploring historical and contemporary contexts. Several of her works are related to West Africa and Algeria. Vieille branche, her first narrative, published by art&fiction in Lausanne, is a discourse with Algeria.
Participated in: MATZA Kerkennah 2017, MATZA Aletsch 2017 and MATZA Lausanne 2021 (Bivouac)
TATYANA ZAMBRANO (COL)
Lives and works in Medellin (Colombia), 1982
In a time when capitalism and technology place us between ethical dilemmas and identity, political and sexual questioning, Tatyana Zambrano proclaims herself a «communist bitch». She explores strategies for the circulation of art, asking herself how her own practice can circulate and infiltrate the Internet and social media. Using advertising techniques, Tatyana Zambrano’s spaces range from the web to TikTok, from videos to merchandising and fashion accessories, questioning with humor and satire the hold of technology and communication on current ideologies.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands, Medellín 2022
