Barros is a Brazilian artist who works from the urge for transformation. They look at re-shaping and re-imagining the past as a way for creating a possible future in which they can exist, navigate through and thrive in. Working with the physicality of the body, soundscapes and visual elements, they manipulate reality by creating fantasy in order to bring the audience into their creation. Through their body they seek enlightenment by transforming their lived experiences into sacred imagery. What many call blasphemy, they call sanctification.
Saman Mahdavi is a versatile artist from Iran who seamlessly integrates images (taswir), text, movement, and installation into their practice. A distinctive aspect of Saman’s art lies in the juxtaposition of movement and political struggle, serving as a poignant manifesto. They dedicate their practice to crafting creative endeavours that resonate with themes of the Middle East, contemporary crises, and ancient wisdom. Their creations are marked by a profound fascination with heat. In Saman’s poetic realm they explore the connection between the somatic movements of the palms and daydreaming where the hands become a symbolic mirror reflecting the enduring fire of the soul. With a background in theatre and dramatic literature, Saman holds a BA degree from the Art University of Tehran and is continuing their studies at SNDO. Saman has exhibited works in Tehran, Beirut, and Amsterdam, engaging in collaborative projects with fellow artists in these vibrant artistic communities.
Sasu Korom was born in Hungary and is currently based between Amsterdam and Budapest. They are a performance artist, choreographer, and movement facilitator working across experimental and commercial choreography. Their works are usually a rambunctious meeting of the inner and outer worlds, where the melting of imagination, body memory, and the stories they encounter is expressed in a variety of emotional landscapes coming through sound and movement. Sasu likes to create site-specific performances rooted in the gathering of community; using dance as a way of storytelling. They work on the embodiment of sounds and words in Hungarian language and the intention of the body manifesting different figures. Sasu perceives themselves existing in an entanglement with the process of death and transformations arising within the non-human relations.
Ciro Monoarfa Goudsmit is an artist fascinated by vibrations. Through the use of specific frequencies and voicework, he connects with the body and the stories hidden in the muscles. Ciro’s practice is based on finding your own rhythm by creating a sensitivity for drum patterns and body tremors. This exploration comes from the desire to understand the inner body in relation to the physical world around us; to re-understand identity by adopting "mixedness" as a style of making.
La Uyi Ihasee is a mixed trans child of the world, stating their presence as a Norwegian-Nigerian physical/experimental theatre performer and choreographer. Prior to their study at SNDO they were based in Oslo, Berlin, and Athens, creating performances for underground collectives, clubs, and festivals since 2016. After SNDO they are aspiring to become the new Wagner of experimental art. With their queer-mixed kid intelligence, they use myths and folklore from West Europe to West Africa, and in-between, to fabulate the many complex experiences of being "the other". With the goal to romanticise the demonised bodies, movements and stories through the visceral languages of Butoh, Buffon and commedia dell’arte.
Agnė Auželytė is a queerfeminist and an artist exploring non-linear dramaturgies, genre glitches and often spending time engaging with memory, documentation and various personal and collective (body) archives. She is interested in collaborative strategies and (temporary) communities; spaces that occur in between fiction and realness, magic and science, shared beliefs, and social frictions. She is curious about multidirectionality, agency of material and practices of care. Agnė was born in Lithuania and is currently living between Amsterdam and Berlin, making videos, dances, performances, dinners, tattoos, experimental slowcore music with her friends at Soft Noise Collective and has performed in various projects across Europe, USA, Asia and the Middle East.
YuJing Liu was born in Yunnan province in China and is an artist curious about the world - the universe, nature, animals. YuJing keeps exploring between the body and the so-called dance, movement, and voice. YuJing is good at translating different cultural backgrounds and environments into other worlds by physical expression. It is some kind of magic. YuJing believes that art and performance have nothing to do with national borders, but are closely linked to culture. YuJing has been exploring how the body responds to different environments and liminal spaces in every present moment. YuJing is also very good at improvisation. Of course, improvising in the performance also means that practice and research is necessary to support the existence of improvisation.
We are seven makers, each from different cultural and geographic backgrounds coming together in a temporary community to play, grieve, and celebrate the honour of being alive. Bringing our artistic bodies into conversation is our ever-emerging methodology. Acknowledging our lineages and history is our inevitability. Showing up for a future yet unimagined is our inspiration. The world around us is burning, and this is our manifesto of hope. We seek to summon magic from our collective mountain of knowledge and choreographies from dancing in an entanglement.
Here you have it, our Paradise.
