Conceptual artist, visual artist, author, cultural manager and researcher Igor Friedrich Petković, born in the Austrian Alps in 1976, lives and works at homes in Central and Southeast Europe. He studied slavistics, cultural science and photography in Graz, Belgrade, Novi Sad and Ljubljana. He participates in international solo and group exhibitions and carries out international interdisciplinary projects and intercultural events. He was awarded the Outstanding Artist Award 2015 from Bundeskanzleramt Austria and was included in the Environmental Photographer of the Year Selection of the Royal Geographic Society London in 2013. Petković is the founder of APORON21 – Association of arts, cultures and sciences, :[ITSCH]: productions, NEW SAD PRODUCTION and ARTEBRE, and a founding member of SCHAUMBAD – free Atelierhouse Graz. He has recently released his photobook Das Franz Ferdinand Prinzip – Warum der Erste Weltkrieg wirklich begann (The Franz Ferdinand Principle – Why World War I really started) published by Edition Lammerhuber. Petković works on a variety of socially and politically committed, intercultural art and cultural projects and in transdisciplinary research fields. In his work he explores contemporary, artistic-scientific expressive possibilities, visionary life-realities, Dionysian-Apollonian event spaces, pop-cultural phenomena of the Zeitgeist, and historical and iconographic conditions.
He tackles socially relevant topics in order to examine them in terms of their scientific-artistic and social content and to interpret them through contemporary understanding. Thus, he develops artistic (counter) strategies on topics such as life realities and migration, identities and intercultural exchange, alternative social, economic, ecological and political processes, open remembrance culture, free knowledge transfer and phenomena of pop and subculture. His stylistic means are choreographed artivism, iconography of collective memory, guerrilla art
actions, mythical hyperrealism, poet portraits and sublime cinema, the respective media and formats always being developed from the stringency of the artistic conception. In his photographic works, films, space-grabbing installations, performances, interventions, exhibition projects and overall events, he interweaves transdisciplinary and multimedia approaches to supporting knowledge levels.

itsch.org
aporon21.org

Maryam Mohammadi is a documentary and art photographer (specialising in staged photography). She was a lecturer at the Tehran University of Art for several years. She devoted her doctoral thesis to the subject of “Photography and Feminism”. She has had solo and joint shows and also curated photo exhibitions in different galleries. Since 2009 she has been living in Graz, Austria, and in 2013 was awarded the Arts Prize of the City of Graz. In her work, she explores the effects of socio-political, cultural and religious conditions on personal, local and global levels for women, migrants and minorities.

maryammohammadi.at

Samson Ogiamien was born in Nigeria and has been working as a freelance artist in Graz, Austria for several years. After his training focussing on art and design as well as welding and construction, he managed a sculptor’s workshop and came to Austria in 2004. There, the young artist attended the two-year master class in sculpture at Ortweinschule Graz – college, from which he graduated with distinction in summer 2007. In 2014 he received the award of the city of Graz promoting outstanding artists. After performing at the international festival for Street & Puppet Theatre, La Strada, the artist was invited to participate in the Colombo Art Biennale, Sri Lanka. Ogiamien’s works are based on the traditions of his home country and usually show the human form in semi-abstract style, often using “contemporary” materials such as concrete, iron, varnish, resin. It is important to him that people less familiar with art should also be able to understand his works. Samson Ogiamien likes to help people experience and express their own creativity. Thus, the artist passes on his talents in workshops. Samson Ogiamien sees his art as a bridge between cultures and as an opportunity of bringing people together.

ogiamien.at