Participants

Mohamed Allam is an artist and director of Medrar for Contemporary Art in Cairo. Medrar aims to encourage the interests of young emerging artists and provide them with opportunities to experiment and to encourage activities and intercultural exchange globally.

Iz Oztat directs the cura residency program in Bodrum, Turkey. Cura Bodrum residency program is a self-organized initiative that hosts cultural producers for residencies, workshops and conferences. Located on the Aegian coast, the aim is to make use of existing tourism infrastructure off season.

Malin and Mathieu Vrijman runs Kultivator, an experimental cooperation of organic farming and visual art practice. Located in rural Dyestad on the island of Öland off the Swedish coast, Kultivator initiates and executes meetings between idealism and realism.

Torbjörn Christiansen is a member of the artist run non-profit exhibition space rum46 initiated by students from the Jutland Academy of Fine Arts in Aarhus, Denmark. Their projects and art practices focus on social dialogue, communication and action with the aim to place social and political problems in focus.

Luba Kuzovnikova is artistic director at Pikene på Broen, a group of curators and producers based in Kirkenes, north east Norway, close to the Russian and Finnish borders. The intention is to create meeting places and build bridges across national borders and across art genres.

Kahled Sedkis is a member of the collective Interruptions in Amman, Jordan. Interruptions is a non-profit experimental project with a rapidly growing network of architects, designers, artists, students, writers and activists aiming to break away from standardization and extend local creative vibes.

Alicia Jimenez runs El Hervidero in Gijón, Spain, an artistic project evolving around a collective space. Conceived as a space for creative activities and as a meeting place, the aim is to facilitate exchange and learning experiences while at the same time also function as a gallery space.

Abir Boukhari runs All Art Now along with her sister Nisrine. All Art Now was founded in 2005 in Damascus as private initiative that focuses on Syrian artists, especially of a younger generation. The foundation was launched in response to the disorganization in the arts and the limited possibilities for Syrian artists to work in this field.


Omar Khouri is a member of the Samandal comics collective based in Beirut. As a non-profit organisation, Samandal aims to lift the stature of comics to that of a mature art form capable of tackling more than superheroes and their baffling hairdos.