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
TANGUY BENOÎT (FR)
Tanguy Benoit is a transdisciplinary artist concerned with the political meaning attributed to landscape in popular media. By examining the methods used to represent territory in entertainment, he points out contemporary issues related to the concepts of border and otherness. He focuses his research on certain communication media, real or fictive, as well as on the social practices, cultural productions and common imaginaries that surround them. Tanguy Benoit’s reflections infiltrate other disciplines such as cinema, video games, design and media studies.
Participated in : MATZA Edgelands Geneva 2023
VINCENT BERTHOLET (CH)
Lives and works in Geneva (CH).
Vincent Bertholet is a double bass player and composer. He is the founder of L’Orchestre tout puissant Marcel Duchamp, a very active group composed today of twelve musicians. Between 2006 and 2022, the Orchestra released five albums and played more than 400 concerts throughout Europe. In addition, Vincent co-founded in 2013 the duo Hyperculte with the Genevan musician and composer Simone Aubert. Together they played more than 250 concerts on four continents. In 2006, he also founded Face Z, a music festival.
Participated in : MATZA Meyrin 2019
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 (FR)
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, MATZA Aletsch 2017, MATZA Edgelands Geneva 2023
LAURENCE BONVIN (CH)
Lives and works in Berlin and Switzerland.
Graduated from the E.N.S.P. (National Photography School), Arles, France, 1991.
Photography professor at Ecal (University of Art and Design), Lausanne, Switzerland since 2001. His films AVANT L’ENVOL (2016) and ALETSCH NEGATIVE (2019) had their international premiere at the Berlinale and won awards at Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur (Swiss camera) and the Fantoche International Animation Film Festival (Swiss prize).
Participated in : MATZA Aletsch 2018
HAROLD BOUVARD (CH)
Lives and works in Geneva (CH).
Craftsman and visual artist, Harold Bouvard graduated from HEAD – Geneva in 2016 (CH). He then opened and directed Le Grand Atelier, a do-it-yourself public association, and later became a visual arts teacher. Passionate about furniture, painting and sculpture, he works with various materials such as wood, fabric or leather.
Participated in : MATZA Meyrin 2019
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
Pierre Cauderay (CH)
Lives and works in Lausanne (CH).
Pierre Cauderay studied engineering physics, then architecture at EPFL (CH) and ETSAM (Madrid, ESP). He then completed his training with an internship at Shigeru Ban architect in New York (USA). In 2013, he founded the Azar workshop, a research project in architecture, prototyping and urbanism. His practice explores both the core of traditional architecture (design and construction), as well as the edges of the discipline (scenography, prototyping). He is co-founder of collective projects and associations such as Labor, La Coquette or jacuzzi.ch.
Participated in: Matza Aletsch 2018, MATZA Meyrin 2019
The Chapuisat brothers
Gregory and Cyril Chapuisat (born respectively in 1972 in New York and 1976 in Biel/Bienne) live and work “in situ”. They construct complex environmental works, notably in the form of labyrinths, tunnels, burrows, alveoli, mountains or spheres, which the viewer discovers in any position, often in half-light or even darkness.
The Chapuisat brothers create works on the borderline between monumental sculpture and micro-architecture. Their installations, built using a method invented for each case, are usually site-specific, and therefore ephemeral. They evoke dreams, fears or childhood experiences, and affirm a convergence between art and life. The phases of creation and realization take shape in long periods of collective work, during which the artists sometimes live in their works. Their overflowing imaginations have taken shape in a number of projects in which they have shown a clear preference for wood. But their interest also extends to other materials, such as concrete in Destruction créatrice (Wartesaal, Zurich, 2008), cardboard (for Hyperespace Neue Kunsthalle, St. Gallen, 2005), or neon (L’Ambition d’une idée, 2010, Argon > Neon (Proto #1), 2017).
Particiated in : MATZA Aletsch 2018
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
la-clique
la-clique is an independent platform for exchange and experimentation around architecture at different scales, cultivating modes of action based on plural intelligence. The members of the collective are graduates of the Polytechnic Schools of Lausanne and Zürich and claim to belong to a generation of architects motivated by interdisciplinarity and teamwork. They are convinced of the crucial role that the discipline must play in political, social and environmental action.
Participated in : MATZA LABOR Bivouac 2021
MAELLE CORNUT (CH)
Maëlle Cornut is a Swiss artist and alumna of the Haute École d’Art et de Design (Bachelor of Visual Arts and Master of Research CCC). In September 2023, she begins the Transforming Environments pre-doctoral program at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste. Her work is regularly exhibited in Switzerland and abroad, including at HUG Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève, Musée d’Art de Pully, MATZA Aletsch, standard/deluxe Lausanne, Local-Int Bienne, Jungkunste Winterthour, Accrochage (Vaud), as well as in France, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Lithuania.
Participated in : MATZA Aletsch 2018
MYRIAM DALAL (LBN)
Myriam Dalal is a writer and researcher, interested in exploring the ties between death, the image and society. She holds a PhD in Arts and Sciences of Art from the Sorbonne University in France, and her postdoctoral studies will focus on Public History, Coproduction and Participatory Practices. Dalal has been writing about arts and culture for the past 13 years, for many platforms and newspapers in Arabic, English and French, including Ecriture de Soi-R, the Markaz Review and Megaphone news.
Participated in: MATZA Edgelands Geneva 2023
NICOLAS DELAROCHE (CH)
Lives and works between Lausanne (CH) and Clamesy (FR).
Nicolas Delaroche pursued an interdisciplinary career for the past ten years, which has been rewarded on several occasions, among which the Pro Helvetia prize for the next generation of photographers, an exhibition project at the Venice Architecture Biennale (IT) in 2021, and an invitation to create a “Kunst am Bau” at the Gymnase de Chamblandes in Pully (CH).
Participated in : MATZA LABOR Bivouac 2021
SIMON DEPPIERRAZ (CH)
Lives and works in Lausanne (CH).
Simon Deppierraz’s work is rooted in an interest for dualities, in the balance between opposing forces and in structural systems. During the initial creative process, the underlying idea of his works can often be identified within the fields of physics or optical laws and phenomena, such as gravity, the weight of bodies and their relationship in space-time. He then develops his work into prints, drawings, sculptures and large-scale installations.
Participated in : MATZA LABOR Bivouac 2021
LORCA DEVANNE-LANGLAIS (FR)
Devanne Langlais is a media artist and sculptor living and working in Marseille, and a researcher at Annecy Art School. Their work invest the fields of new medias and technology, using craft manner to gently hack and question our contemporary world and systems. Through fictions and writing they are interested in relationship between human-beings and others constituents of the worlds. In 2019, with the creation of La Société des Nouveaux Mondes their practice takes a new turn by questioning collective process of production, authorship and multi-identities, and experimentation in different research axis.
Participated in : MATZA Edgelands Geneva 2023
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
LAURENT FAULON (CH)
Lives and works in Geneva (CH).
Laurent Faulon develops an art of interventions, most often ephemeral and strongly contextualized. Over the past twenty years, his work has moved from performance to sculpture. Often designing works that resonate with the architectural, political, economic or social characteristics of the places that host them, the latter constitute the starting point of his reflection. His practice is based on the analysis of the conditions of production and exhibition, and seeks to reconfigure the issues at stake.
Participated in : MATZA Meyrin 2019
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
SABRINA FERNANDEZ CASAS (CH/ESP)
Her work investigates non-hegemonic, migratory and post-industrial narratives. This poetic and subjective research unfolds with different media, depending on modes of circulation and contexts of dissemination. Sabrina Fernández Casas defends an ecology of art operating through existing, transformed and pirated materials. In 2015, she co-founded the collective MACACO PRESS that explores the relation between self-publishing and performance. Her works were exhibited at Centre d’art contemporain (Genève), La Capsula (Zurich), CAN (Neuchâtel), Kiosko Galería (Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia), Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst (Bremen), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), Galería Bacelos (Vigo).
Participated in : MATZA Edgelands Geneva 2023
GAILING RICKLING (CH)
Nurtured by their respective experiences, Héloïse Gailing and Marc Rickling joined forces in 2020 to found the Gailing Rickling office, which is active in architecture and in the mediation of building culture. Especially sensitive to materials and their implementation, their projects are anchored in their natural, built and social context. Their commitment extends through their involvement in projects to raise awareness of the building culture.
Participated in : MATZA LABOR Bivouac 2021
CELESTE GANDOLPHE (FR/BE)
Lives and works between Marseille (FR) and Bruxelles (BE).
Céleste Gandolphe is a muralist and illustrator. For her, the mural is a social tool, an artisanal and popular art, since it allows citizens to be involved, and often touches a large number of people. Intervention in the public space is an important question in her work. Her drawing ideas emerge from the interactions between the city and its inhabitants. The inspirations often come from the walls, their stories and those who live there.
Participated in : MATZA BIVOUAC Labor 2021
FELICIEN GOGUEY (CH)
Félicien Goguey is a media artist and interaction designer who lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland. He explores the creative potential of programming languages and new technologies to create interactive installations, live performances, applications and connected objects. His main interests lie in communication networks and in the factors responsible for their imperceptibility as well as their political and social consequences.
Participated in : MATZA Edgelands Genève (FR)
GAËL GRIVET (CH–FR)
Visual artist, born in 1978 in Versailles (FR), lives and works in Geneva (CH).
Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts de Quimper, he obtained the post-graduate diploma Art-Lieu-Paysage at the Haute école d’art et de design – Genève. Gaël Grivet’s devices reflect a mode of image production ante litteram, providing the material for a narrative formed by collage and fertile telescoping. In recent years, his work has been shown at the Centre d’art contemporain in Geneva, the Swiss Art Awards in Basel, the Salon de Montrouge, the Palais de Tokyo and the Villa du Parc in Annemasse.
Participated in : MATZA Aletsch 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
GREGOIRE GUEX-CROZIER (CH)
Lives and works in Lausanne (CH).
Grégoire Guex-Crozier graduated from EPFL in 2017 with a Master’s degree in architecture. He develops different projects with a focus that ranges from the detail to the large scale. Active internationally, he develops different research projects in Nida (LT), Inari (FN), Rijeka (CR) and Venice (IT). Today, present in many competitions, he combines a multidisciplinary vision with a broad culture of the building.
Participated in : MATZA LABOR Bivouac 2021
TARIK HAYWARD (CH)
Lives and works in la Vallée de Joux (CH).
Whether he produces a self-made bulletproof glass or his own glue to assemble the pages of his exhibition catalog, or fabricates water from pig blood, Tarik Hayward intricates the components of art and the lines of life. His entire corpus relies on the life of things, and their silent, fluid, and uncontrollable evolution and involution. From collapse to reuse, Tarik’s work is in the meantime an ode to the end of things and a conjuration of the dark times we are going through.
Participated in : MATZA LABOUR Bivouac 2021
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
SEVERINE HUBARD (FR)
Lives and works between Saint-Denis and le Cassan (FR).
After studying at the Beaux-Arts of Dunkerque and Nantes (FR), Séverine Hubard obtained her DNSEP in 2001. In her work, she builds three-dimensional structures, and uses materials according to the rules of DIY; materials are used to do what she needs them to do and not for what they are intended. While the main focus of Séverine’s work remains her own reading of architecture, there are four other important axes: the attention to the public, the importance of memory, the use of the point of view and the investigation of public spaces.
Participated in : MATZA Meyrin 2019
ELISE INDOVINO (FR)
Lives in Marseille (FR) and works between Marseille and Bruxelles (BE).
After a career in the film industry in France (Producer Assistant for short movies, Assistant Stage Manager, Set Photographer) and always driven by the image, Élise Indovino went to the Beaux-Arts of Bruxelles (BE) in photography. Since then, her practice has oscillated between photography and plastic projects. These two universes are often associated, video being also a large part of her artistic practice.
Participated in : MATZA LABOR Bivouac 2021
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
ANDREAS KRESSIG (CH)
Andreas Kressig lives and works in Geneva. He creates ephemeral, installation-based works made from salvaged, diverted or found materials in the vicinity of the sites where he works. His installations are often inspired by vehicles or mobile structures that the public can make their own.
Participated in : MATZA LABOR Bivouac 2021
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
MAXIME LAMARCHE (FR)
Born in 1988 in Audincourt (25), Maxime Lamarche is now based in Saint Etienne.He studied mechanical engineering in Montbéliard, before graduating from Lyon’s Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in 2012. Through the landscapes and architectures he conjures up, Maxime Lamarche questions the survival time of our fantasies and illusions with his hybrid sculptures of precarious equilibrium. He hijacks architecture, boats, vehicles and other symbolic objects to reveal their cultural charge. Playing on the scale and evocative potential of his works, he initiates a disconcerting narrative that questions our finitude, scaffolding tomorrow’s forms from those of yesterday’s world.
Participated in : MATZA Aletsch 2019
MICK LORUSSO (USA)
Mick Lorusso is a cross-disciplinary artist who interweaves musings on molecules, cells, societies, and environments. He creates images, cabinets of curiosity and interactions to address questions about energy, water, climate, and health. He has participated in urban ecology collaborations in Mexico City and as a resident in various interdisciplinary art programs.
Participated in : MATZA Aletsch 2017
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
ZUL MAHMOD (SG)
Zul Mahmod (b. 1975) is one of Singapore’s leading sound artists. He has been at the forefront of a generation of sound-media artists in Singapore’s contemporary art development – one of the genres of international contemporary art-making that has been garnering interest for its interdisciplinary approach and experimental edge. Zul has cut a reputation for integrating 3-D forms with ‘sound constructions’ and ‘sound-scapes’. Zul explores spatial awareness, aural architecture and social issues in a subtle way but impactful in his practice.
participated in : MATZA Edgelands Geneva 2023
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
BASTIAN MARZOLI (CH)
Lives and works in Lausanne (CH).
Bastian Marzoli graduated from EPFL in 2021 with a degree in architecture. Defining himself as an architect who does not want to build, his theoretical research focuses on a moratorium banning new construction. In his art, architecture and daily life, Bastian strives to use only what already exists – both out of ecological conviction and for his love of kitsch aesthetics of the late 20th century. In addition to that, in 2021 he co-founded the diversified practice détritus.
Participated in : MATZA LABOR Bivouac 2021
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
JANE C. MI (USA)
Trained as an ocean engineer and an artist, Jane Chang Mi considers land politics and postcolonial ecologies. Exploring the traditions and narratives associated with environment through her interdisciplinary and research-based work. Mi aims to express our contemporary relationship to nature and each other.
Participated in : MATZA Aletsch 2017
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
ERIC PHILIPPOZ (CH)
Eric Philippoz is an artist from Ayent. From 2006 to 2009, he studied visual arts/media at the Haute école d’art et de design, Geneva, and went to the Bergen National Academy of the Arts in Norway in 2008 as part of an exchange semester. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in 2009, graduating with honors. From 2010 to 2012, he continued his studies with a Master’s degree in visual arts at the ArtEZ Dutch Art Institute, Arnhem, in the Netherlands. He has been invited to several residencies. In 2010, he joined the P4 collective in Neuchâtel. In 2012, he travelled to Notodden, Norway, and then, from 2012-2014, resided at Atelier tremplin pour jeunes artistes at Ferme Asile in Sion.
Participated in : MATZA Aletsch 2019
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, Amboy 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
ANU PENNANEN (FIN)
Anu Pennanen is a Finnish sound artist and film-maker. Her interest in space and territory leads her to invest the places where she works in depth. For Bivouac en 2021, she used archive documents and sounds taken on and around the Rasude site to imagine, in collaboration with artist Sasu Ripatti, an immersive sound work that speaks of the building’s history, its present and the speculated forms of its possible future.
Participated in : MATZA LABOR Bivouac 2021
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
DELPHINE REIST (CH)
Lives and works in Geneva (CH). Several solo exhibitions have been dedicated to her : at the Frac Grand Large in Dunkerque in 2022 (FR), at the Galerie Laurent Godin in Paris (FR) in 2020, at the Centre d’Art Pasquart in Bienne in 2017 (CH), at the MAMCO in 2013 (CH), at the Dallas Biennial in 2012 (USA), at Fri Art in 2009 (CH), in Tour in 2008 (FR).
Participated in : Amboy 2016, MATZA Meyrin 2019,
DELPHINE RENAULT (FR)
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
NATHALIE RODACH (CH-FR)
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
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
DIEGO SOLOGUREN (ESP)
Lives and works in Getxo (ESP).
Diego Sologuren studied architecture in San Sebastián (ESP) and continued with a Master in Urban Studies in Brussels (BE). In 2014, he joined Francis Kéré’s architecture firm, an experience that sharpened his sensibility and influenced his way of conceiving architecture and design, integrating as key values honesty, economy of means and constructive simplicity. Diego develops his experimental practice and continually seeks to bend the rules of convention. He aims to push architecture to its conceptual boundaries with other disciplines.
Participated in : MATZA LABOR Bivouac 2021
MARKUS STOFFEL (CH)
Markus Stoffel’s research focuses on Climate Change Impacts and Risks in the Anthropocene (C-CIA), with the aim to understand, document and quantify fundamental environmental processes, and the drivers of change. More particularly, he has been working over the past few years on the impacts of climatic changes on periglacial mass movements, the effects of volcanic eruptions on climate (temperature, precipitation), peatland evolution over the Holocene and its link to hydroclimatic changes, the effects of climate and global changes on biodiversity, biomass or sequestered carbon in the Himalayas, Myanmar and the Andes, or on causes and effects of erosion in badlands or along the Mediterranean coast.
Participated in : MATZA Aletsch 2018
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
SEBASTIEN TRIPOD (CH)
Lives and works in Lausanne (CH).
Sébastien Tripod holds a master’s degree in architecture (CH) and a degree from the Ghent School of Art (BE). He works as a freelance architect and creates experiments focused on sustainability, self-building and cooperation. Sébastien is part of Constructlab, a transdisciplinary and collaborative network of practitioners and often collaborates with different groups (HALLO, Inland, A.Pass and Free Home University) on residential projects, advocating environmental and social ecology.
Participated in : MATZA LABOR Bivouac 2021
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
