About the artists
Photo: Julia Spada
About Iris Smeds
Iris Smeds (b. 1984) lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. Her work revolves around the individual's marketability and its increasing lack of belonging. It strives to examine our existence and society from a poetic and performative perspective. Smeds has a background in theatre and her projects often blurs the boundaries between installation, performance and moving image, with a theatrical and surreal imagery. In 2019, Smeds received the Maria Bonnier Dahlin Scholarship. She has performed and exhibited at Moderna Museet, Malmö Konstmuseum, Mint, Luleå biennial, Tensta konsthall among others. She is represented in the several collections such as Maria Bonnier Dahlin and is the one-man punk band Vaska Fimpen.
Photo: Märta Thisner
About Amanda Apertrea
Amanda Apetrea (b.1981 in Uppsala, Sweden) is a Stockholm-based choreographer and performer. Working within the fields of contemporary dance and performance, she adopts a queer feminist perspective in her work, focusing on the body, sexuality, and gender expressions. Combining choreographic methods with political theories, she creates works that challenge dominant power structures.
Apetrea trained at The Ballet Academy in Stockholm and holds a Master’s degree in Choreography from Stockholm University of the Arts. Her works have been presented nationally and internationally in collaboration with artists including Halla Ólafsdóttir, Lisen Rosell, and Cornelius. Selected works include Pride and Prejudice, Sälkvinnorna (Seal Women), Primary Partner and Fäbodjäntan. She frequently collaborates with MDT and Turteatern in Stockholm and is a member of the choreographic collectives ÖFA and Samlingen.
Photo: Amanda Apetrea
About Benjamin Quigley
Benjamin Quigley (b.1975) is a musician, composer, director and performer working across music, performance, and theatre. His artistic practice explores sound, embodiment and durational formats, often emphasizing repetition, endurance and audience perception. As a performer, he has collaborated with artists such as Marina Abramović, Poste Restante, Reich/Szyber and many more.
In recent years, Quigley has worked closely with artist Markus Öhrn, composing and performing music for works including Korpelarörelsen, Requiem (Dödsmässa) at Bonniers Konsthall, and 5 x Norén at Dramaten. His work often situates music as an active, performative force within spatial and choreographic contexts.
He is also a member of the band BOOM!
About Roxy Farhat
Roxy Farhat (b. 1984) is an artist and climate activist based in Stockholm, Sweden. In her artistic practice she has mainly worked with issues such as capitalism’s power over public and private spaces, societal prejudices, and the role art plays as a political force, often with a humorous twist. Since 2023, she has been an active member of the climate movement Återställ Våtmarker, which has caused her to question the role art plays in a time when the basis for human life is threatened by the climate crisis. This questioning has led her to leave her previous artistic practice behind, with the purpose of understanding how art that attempts to answer the climate- and democratic collapse, might look like.
About Ailin Mirlashari
Ailin Mirlashari (b. 1992) is an artist active in the intersection between collective memory, space and community. Her artistic practice often begins with listening to people, environments and fragments of stories, and moves through intuition rather than with fixed, predetermined outcomes. Together with film, sound, text, performance and installation, Ailin aims to understand our present time: how we relate to each other, how memories are formed and reformed, and how images might create space for care and reflection.
About Netti Nüganen
Netti Nüganen (b. 1995)) is a performance artist and musician.
Her work engages with dark ecology through sound-rich, narrational approaches. Treating everything known with careful deconstruction, Nüganen questions which forms of storytelling are needed and what's at stake. She steps into dialogue with her surrounding environment by working often with large amounts of natural materials such as clay powder, freshly mown grass, and ice. Building narratives while deconstructing them, is her method to open up space for new dramatics.
Having attained a BA in choreography at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO), Nüganen's works have been shown at My Wild Flag festival, Impulstanz Festival, Batard Festival,Pre-Urbaines, Tartu Art Museum, KIM? gallery, Kanuti Gildi SAAL, Lisbon Film Festival, Lewisham Art Gallery, Sequences Festival and more.
Next to that she has been touring since 2017 with Florentina Holzinger’s performances.
About Gergő D. Farkas
gergő d. farkas (b.1996) is a gathering of cells with a passion for choreography, dance, romance and mischief. Being lost in Vienna, Budapest, Stockholm, or somewhere in between, they dream of belonging to sensual spaces where not only humans are invited to dance.