Matea Bakula looks beyond the aesthetics of materials, working almost like a chemist or physicist to uncover their hidden properties. Her recent work explores cyclical processes, investigating how seeds, cells, and organs find their place within natural and artificial environments. By using recycled egg cartons, she highlights matter’s transformative nature, revealing its fluid and ever-evolving identity. The works presented here embody this ongoing metamorphic process, driven by her curiosity about material potential.
Born in Sarajevo in 1990, Bakula lives and works in Utrecht. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at Buitenplaats Doornburgh, Maarssen (2024); Eartheaters, Lustwarande (2023); A Wheel A Rope A Stone A Wing, Park, Tilburg (2023); Art Rotterdam (2021); Collector's Item, Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2021); and Between Grace and Fury, Kunstvereniging Diepenheim (2018). In 2013, she won the Startpoint Prize for Best European Emerging Artist in Prague and was featured in Mondriaan Fund’s Prospects & Concepts at Art Rotterdam (2019). In 2013 Bakula was the recipient of the Startpoint Prize: Best European Emerging Artist in Prague. Matea, as a young artists and emerging talent in the Dutch scene, was also part of the Mondriaan Fund’s Prospects & Concepts at Art Rotterdam 2019.
Otobong Nkanga’s multidisciplinary practice examines ecological entanglements and material relationships between bodies, territories, and minerals. Her work—spanning drawing, sculpture, performance, and installation—translates natural elements into layered networks of memory, labor, care, and ownership. Investigating the tensions between the Global North and South, she creates poetic, research-driven works that unsettle distinctions between minimalism, surrealism, and conceptualism.
Otobong Nkanga (born 1974, Kano, Nigeria) lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. Nkanga has been an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam in 2002-04, DAAD Berlin programme in 2013-14 and at the Martin Gropius-Bau in 2019.
Her most recent solo exhibitions include: MoMA, New York, USA (2024), IVAM, Valencia, Spain (2023); Frist Art Museum, Nashville, USA; Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges, Belgium (2022); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2021); Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin, Italy (2021-2022); Villa Arson, Nice, France (2021); Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway (2020-2021); Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany (2020); Tate St Ives, UK (2019); Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town, South Africa (2019). Nkanga was given the Special Mention Award at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Italy, 2019 and won the 2017 Belgium Art Prize. Other notable awards include the Peter-Weiss-Preis, Sharjah Biennial Prize, the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award, the Flemish Cultural Award for Visual Arts - Ultima and the Yanghyun Prize.
Thierry Oussou mostly paints and draws on black paper and in life-size formats. His paintings are created in a distinctive drawing-like, expressive style and show distorted figures, faces, objects and symbols. People are often the subject; in recent years, Oussou has developed an interest in the theme of 'labour' and his figures refer to working people.
Thierry Oussou was a resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (2015-2016). He received
the Royal Award for Modern Painting in 2023. Recent exhibitions: Centraal Museum, Utrecht
(2023); Aichi Triennale, Japan (2022); Art contemporain du Bénin, Palais de la Marina, Cotonou
(2022); Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (2020); Art Exchange, Essex (2019); Saõ Paulo Biennial (2019);
10th Berlin Biennale (2018).
In the Projections section of the fair, Judith Westerveld presents the video ”The Sending of the Crows” (2024). This work is based on a |xam legend told by brother and sister Dia!kwain and !kweiten ta ||ken in Cape Town in 1874, in which three crows are sent by |xam women to find their husbands. Both narratives start the same but end very differently. Through a spoken word soundtrack and animation, the film brings them into the present, foregrounding Dutch colonialism in South Africa and the resilience of the |xam people.
Judith Westerveld (Den Haag, 1985) lives and works in Amsterdam. Recent exhibitions include The Crow Messengers (2024, Lumen Travo, Amsterdam), Between Borders (2023, Museum Arnhem), Projections (2025, Art Rotterdam, Ahoy), and Returning the Gaze (2022, Sites of Memory, Haarlem, Amsterdam, Middelburg). Her work has also been featured in film screenings such as The Sending of the Crows (2025, LI-MA Presents: New Art on Screen, Arnhem) and Message from Mukalap (2023, Transitions, Maastricht).