Issue 17

Solène Bonnet (born in 1996) is a product designer who graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven. Her iridescent and organic-looking creations allude to the distortions that bodies undergo in digital environments and through aesthetic interventions. Solène Bonnet’s pieces have been exhibited at Milan Design Week, Dutch Design Week, the Lake Como Design Festival and the Collectible Design Fair in Brussels.

David Smalling was born in 1987 in Kingston, Jamaica. He studied mathematics at Yale University, where he also trained at the art school, and went on to complete a PhD at Harvard University. He now lives and works in New York.

Jessica Lisse is a painter born in 1990. After studying graphic design, she finally decided not to be quite a graphic designer.

Tao Zuo, born in Liaoning Province, China, lives and works between China and Paris. His work explores cultural exchanges in blending Chinese philosophy with Western approaches. Through installations that combine forms, materials and soundscapes, he creates evocative and immersive environments. Since 2023, he has also opened his own gallery, extending his artistic practice into a space for exhibition and encounter.

Of Franco-British origin, the visual artist Meaghan Matthews explores painting, sculpture, installation, photography, drawing and glasswork. Fascinated by changes in scale, she moves the viewer's gaze from the infinitely small to the cosmic through changing works. These transformations can be both immediate and latent, perceptible or invisible to the naked eye, like glass whose atoms are in constant vibration on a microscopic scale. This continuous exploration acts as a reminder of our righteous place in the world, of our necessary inscription in the cycle of life. However, behind this formal research also emerges a more intimate dimension. It is a question of daring to take his place in the work of Meaghan Matthews, who distills, through the dialogue of materials, clues about his own identity quest. A treasure hunt that can be guessed in particular with the roots of mangrove, collected on the land of its origins in Martinique, which are as many anchor points as stages of a story under construction.

Born in 1989, Mohamed Said Chair lives and works in Tangier, Morocco. A self-taught artist, he initially embarked on a career in finance before leaving that field in 2017 to devote himself fully to painting.

In Athens, where the strata of recent history are still overlapping the scars of the crisis, a generation of artists has emerged, making instability a field of research. Among them, a singular figure, whose work navigates between performance, experimental film and field investigation. Formed between Ithaca, Naples, Barcelona and Berlin, it builds a work deeply rooted in contemporary political realities, while exploring more diffuse areas: those of the body, the look and alternative forms of life. From Place Syntagma to the peak of the Greek crisis to LGBTQI+ communities and collective experimentation, his work unfolds as a series of sensitive investigations on the structures that organize our lives - family, power, representation. In her country, artistic practice is neither pure observation nor subjective expression: it develops in an unstable in-between, where the artist is both a witness, participant and a disruptive. A way of making art not a refuge, but a tool for exploring reality.

Robert Jaso was born in Czechoslovakia in 1964. He has lived in France since his childhood.

Sinan Orakçı was born in Bitlis (Turkey) in 1995, and graduated in 2019 at the University of Marmara, where he studied painting and business management. He has participated in many workshops and exhibitions, including the NMK Contemporary Art Workshop (Izmir), Ali Şimşek's Contemporary Art Workshop and the Itinerant Painters' Art Workshop. His work is inspired by many disciplines, ranging from psychology to philosophy. His works are part of the collections of the Arter Museum and many other collections. In 2023, he presented his first solo exhibition entitled "The Authority of Appetites" at the Ferda Art Platform. The artist continues his work in his studio in Kadıköy, Istanbul.