Director, choreographer and dancer Ibrahim Abdo holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. During his study at the Cairo Contemporary Dance Center, Ibrahim worked with various styles from traditional dances, martial arts, and Sufi whirling to Tahtib, kung-fu, muay thai, and Khatak. He started his own research on the state of flow through movement in different cultures and completed two residency programs at the Alanus University in Germany investigating the concept of flow as understood in Eurythmy studies. In 2015 he participated in a series of meetings and residencies between Egyptian and Italian choreographers resulting in a newly choreographed piece Green Leaves Are Gone.

Ibrahim adamantly believes in self-re-creation. He explores this practice in numerous social development initiatives that involve both professional art makers and members of communities whose lives are not connected to arts professionally. His interests during the residency in the US occupy a broad spectrum – from art practices in Native American communities and sustainability of the US arts organizations to dance practices in underprivileged communities.

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Dante Buu is an artist, storyteller and performer who intertwines the autobiographical with the lives of others. Dante’s artistic practice, fluid and playful across mediums, is intimately rooted in the untold stories of love and resistance.

Buu represented Montenegro at the 59th Venice Biennale Arte (2022). His works have been shown at numerous international exhibitions and festivals, including: Young & Restful, MeetFactory, Prague (2022); and you—do you die happy?, Berlin Art Week, Good To Talk, Hallen #2, Wilhelm Hallen, Berlin (2021); “thigh high”, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2021); Montenegrin Art Salon 13th November, Montenegrin Art Gallery “Miodrag Dado Đurić”, Cetinje (2019); Weekend Lovers II, Art Weekend Belgrade, Dim, Belgrade (2019); NEXUS 1, TBA Festival, PICA, Portland (2019); Careful with that axe, Eugene, AKT Art Space, Kyiv (2019); I do not want my Lover to go to Work, CC Tobacco 001, Ljubljana (2018–2019); Universal Hospitality 2, FUTURA Center for Contemporary Art, Prague (2017); This is not my history!, Steirischer Herbst, < rotor > center for contemporary art, Graz (2015); 3. Biennial of Contemporary Art, Tito’s Bunker, Konjic (2015); Mama I am OK in the Neon Green, Gallery Duplex100m2, Sarajevo (2013–2014).

Dante’s work has received numerous awards and recognition, including the Milčik YVAA (2021) and Salon 13th November (2019), and is represented in various private collections, including agnès b. Currently participating in the ArtsLink International Fellowship residency in New Orleans, Buu’s previous residencies include: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2021–2022), Ankara Queer Art Program, Ankara (2020–2021), CC Tobacco 001, Ljubljana (2018–2019), KulturKontakt Austria, Vienna (2017), Q21, MuseumsQuartier, Vienna (2017), and the West Balkan Calling residency with < rotor > center for contemporary art and CCN, Graz (2016).

Dante Buu lives and works between Rožaje, Montenegro, and Berlin, Germany.

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Visual artist and designer Yosra El Gazzar merges expressive qualities of art with the communicative power of design, to visually investigate, question, and narrate our socio- and geo-political realities. Yosra has been the lead designer with Visualizing Palestine since 2016, an organization that uses data-led visual stories to present factual narratives of the Palestinian-Israeli issue, along with other social justice topics.

Yosra is a fellow of DOX BOX, the Moutheqat Women in Documentary fellowship in Tunisia. She started her career with the project The Flat Earth, which was featured at the Global Grad Show in Dubai in 2016. Since then, she participated in a number of exhibitions in Cairo, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Amman, Beirut and Toronto. Her video series So Close Yet So Far was widely acclaimed when released in 2020. During her residency in the US Yosra is interested in being immersed in Arab communities who have been settled for many years, and also to explore how the surveillance space and social and economic injustice impact those communities.

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Artist and cultural manager and producer Brigitta Kovács dedicates her work to support emerging artists in developing their career, finding collaborators, funding, presentation opportunities locally and internationally. Besides providing management support for artists she has a strong focus on the development of the contemporary performing arts scene as a whole. In 2019 she was selected for the SuSy Cultural Management program of Workshop Foundation and has been working in close collaboration with them ever since creating better conditions for the artists. Coming from a business background she was working on finding new business models for NGOs in the performing arts sector in Hungary and improving their access to international funding and markets.

During her residency in the US, Brigitta is keen to explore different managerial approaches and initiate a collective reflection on innovative fundraising strategies, organization structures, and the means to successfully engage with audiences, partners and communities.

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Independent curator Tina Petersone holds an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a BSc in Communication Science at the University of Latvia. In 2020 she won the first Young Curator! prize with the exhibition To Fall in Love, Click Here, showcased at the Riga Photography biennial 2021. In 2019 she was appointed as the first curator-participant at Biennale de la Jeune Création Européenne — a traveling group exhibit hosted alternately for one month by each of its seven partner countries.

In 2020 Tina co-founded an organization temporary.lv and opened a micro-utopic art laboratory at the Baltic Sea, embedded in ideas of slow curating, close collaboration, and process-oriented art. Her mission is to use her role as a curator in creating a more accessible and united art network, involve audiences as active co-investigators, and nurture open, curious, and communicative work relationships. For her residency in the US Tina is interested in exploring the art world’s post-pandemic recovery. She is also keen to meet colleagues from alternative art spaces focused on experimental and ephemeral practices.

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Choreographer, cultural manager and disability advocate Monika Požek is a founder of MeetShareDance Association, an inclusive dance and performing arts organization that works between Ljubljana, Slovenia and Madrid, Spain. The association aims to promote best accessibility practices in the field of inclusive arts and to foster an International Dance Network for individuals and groups working with dance and disability. Monika organizes the international inclusive dance Festival MeetShareDance since 2012. Produced annually in the European cities Madrid, Ljubljana, Dublin, Berlin, Helsinki, Porto, and Belfast, the festival has brought together more than 600 dancers and choreographers with and without disabilities.

Monika is interested in digital innovation and dance and showing the possibilities of diverse bodies.  Her work includes numerous choreographies presented in Slovenia and internationally. Believing in dance as a unique language accessible to everyone, she is keen to dedicate her residency to exploring communities of senior citizens, and people with terminal conditions. Monika also intends to further her research in the crossing points between the arts and theory in anatomy and medicine.

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Independent curator, art manager and museum specialist Asli Samadova worked in strategy consulting in Europe prior to her career shift in 2014. From 2014-2017 she was consultant to the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Azerbaijan after which she helped Goethe-Institut in facilitating their relations with local government institutions and stakeholders as well as organizing cultural events in Azerbaijan. This was an important milestone in forming Asli’s curatorial practice and developing an in-depth knowledge of the local art community and their needs.

In 2019 Asli converted her apartment in Baku into a temporary art space – setting a basis for Ta(r)dino 6 Art Platform (tardino6.art), a self-organized art initiative with international outreach. Ta(r)dino 6 supports discourse on Azerbaijani contemporary art within international context, with a special focus on gender, identity and equality in the art world. Currently establishing Ta(r)dino’s status as a non-profit and non-governmental arts organization, Asli is keen to learn about structures and day to day operations of non-profit arts institutions in the US. She is keen to gain practical experience in board development and management in the arts.

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Artist and cultural activist Anna Scherbyna sees art as a field for experimentation with forms and testing alternative worlds. Her artistic practice draws on the current socio-political situation and examines the political potential of media such as installation and video, drawing and painting. Her work covers a wide range of topics and questions such as landscape and its political charge, the perception of an image in cultural and political contexts, relations between a work of art and the viewer, object-subject relationships, gender performativity and violence.

Anna is engaged in numerous collaborative projects and her curatorial practice is centered on the formation of a community. For her residency in the US she intends to extend her practical implementation of a feminist approach towards building an artistic community. Having explored different forms of co-working and co-being together, Anna dreams about a feminist art institution holding feminism as its core principle.

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