Graduation 2022

Masters Performing Public Space from Fontys Tilburg, 2022 graduation show. The exhibition programme presents outcomes of artistic research created in a one-year master’s course by nine international artists. Their practices are focusing on methods and conditions for collective making, interdisciplinary co-creating and performing diverse spaces. The field of their investigations lies in social design with a cross-disciplinary approach based in practices such as dance, theatre, dramaturgy, visual arts, and circus.

Visitors are invited to Tilburg’s SEA Foundation for a two-day gallery exhibition and a series of interactions in public space. We invite you to discuss the artistic research outcomes and dialogue about our social imaginaries.

Artist’s Bios

Yannis Varvaresos is an actor, and theater director based in Greece, with a background in contemporary dance and music. Born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1989, he holds a BA in acting and two Master’s degrees in “Theatre Directing and Acting” and in Electrical and Computer Engineering, both from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Since 2021, he attends the Fontys University Master’s Program “Performing Public Space” in Tilburg, NL, where he conducts his artistic research project “Peripatetic (Dis)Courses”, using walking and conversing as artistic practices. Website, Instagram, and Facebook

Jitka Čechová is a freelance dancer and choreographer based in Prague, Czechia and since 2017 she has been working at the Centre for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning (CAMP), where her interest in public space and desire to artistically claim neglected and discriminated places was triggered. In addition to contemporary dance techniques, Jitka also studied Chinese classical dance techniques in Chengdu and New York City, which made her more aware of the energetic fl ows in her body and the continuity of movement that made her grow as an artist and as a person. Her most recent choreography, display, won Production of the Year at the 2022 Czech Dance Platform. Jitka is excited about her new direction as a multi-disciplinary artist-researcher and hopes to spread her findings to the community of dancers, sociologists, and architects. Website, Project website

Florinda Camilleri is a dance artist and community pharmacist from and based in Malta. Her artistic practice dances through and between arts, humanities, and sciences. As an independent practitioner, she initiates, leads, and supports performing arts projects in Malta and internationally, taking on various and variegated roles as performer, maker, collaborator, educator, coach, producer, and facilitator. Florinda is interested in the unearthing and exploring of human-world relations in public space(s) through the moving body, particularly through more-than-human perspectives. Her performance practice has expanded to encompass screendance performance and direction. Instagram 

Ioannis Karounis is a performer and choreographer. He is also a Filmmaker, with a keen interest in video and documentaries, and artistic co-director of the International Dance Film Festival “Athens Video Dance Project”. He has collaborated with artists, institutions, and festivals worldwide, including the Marina Abramovic Institute, NEON Organization, Benaki Museum, National Theater of Norway, Niarchos Foundation, Documenta 14 (Athens/Kassel), stART – Robert Bosch, XVII Festival International de Danza Contemporanea (Mexico), Kalamata International Dance Festival, Athens, Epidaurus, National Theater of Greece, International Dance Festival of South Korea, Hostscena Alesund-Norway), Echo Echo (Ireland), Off Europa Germany), Arc for Dance. Website

Valentina Solari is a circus artist who specialises in juggling, static trapeze, and trapeze-juggling (an integration of both). After graduating circus school in 2018, she co-founded The Bull in a China Shop Project to focus on practice-led research. Since her work has explored methods for creating instance of collaboration in circus between artist, audience, and non-humans. As well, Valentina works as a circus teacher at Circomedia and a freelance performer, having performed in a variety of UK festivals and in the summer 2019 tour of Shipwrecks by Citrus Arts. Website

Kamila Wolszczak is a Polish, visual artist and researcher based in the Netherlands. She is a matter mediator, counter-narratives inventor with strong communication skills and a thirst for knowledge. She creates performance, text and installation projects based on the relations between self-organized public side space and artifacts and human traces. She enjoys collaborative projects and co-creation, specifically the blending of facts with speculation. As a mediator she holds a wide professional skill set, and is sensitive towards different components of artistic processes and productions. She accepts change as inevitable and tries to find a way to communicate with that and believes in the power of matter and communities, creativity as a magic tool for real shifts in society. Kamila studied at the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University Lublin (Painting BA), the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław (Art Mediation MA) and Fontys Tilburg (MA Performing Public Space) Website, Instagram, and Project Speculative Objects Instagram 

Chiara De Marchis Garofalo is an interdisciplinary and transfeminist artist, working in the field of performance and video art. Their background is in social design and visual communication, they designed projects, co-created, and worked with different NGOs in Italy and Belgium. Their work is based on sensory auto-ethnographic research on the non-binary body and identity. It aims to transform performative practices of self- determination into rituals through decolonial, queer, and transfeminist lenses. Their artistic interest lies in the interconnectedness between the oppression of gender non- conforming identities and the exploitation of colonized and occupied lands through a communitarian and visual approach. Instagram

Hiba Masad is a visual artist based in Amman, Jordan; she worked as an activity specialist at a public library in Amman for the past 8 years which opened her eyes to the role of arts and literature in developing creative societies. During those years, she ran several artistic workshops and activities; she worked with both children and adults alike from various backgrounds of society. Hiba believes that art is a dynamic human experience with a lot of emotions involved and she wants to use art as a tool to help people find peace and be in touch with their emotions. Website

Laura A. Jakschas is based in Northern Germany was trained as an actor from 2004-2007 and studied directing theatre at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg and Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Amsterdam from 2010 to 2014. From 2014 she works in the fields of directing, acting, dramaturgy, production, (song) writing and teaching in various institutions such as Thalía Theater Hamburg, HfMT Hamburg, Landestheater Niedersachsen Nord, Theater Osnabrück, Hessisches Landestheater Marburg, Theater an der Glocksee, Theater Lüneburg/ Theater zur weiten Welt. She also creates productions for festivals in Germany and the Netherlands. Collaborations with Jerzy Bielski in 2015 lead to the Dioraphte Award of Amsterdam Fringe festival for not only futurists.Her latest work is inspired by exploring public space as a performative field, for instance in the durational performance no border plants for the Kunstfestspiele Herrenhausen 2020

Website Fontys Masters Performing Public Space, and a gallery of projecs
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