About

Artists

Collaborations

Lanyun Huang (Finch) – China / United Kingdom
& Malak Mattar – Palestine / United Kingdom

Lanyun Huang (Finch)
Born in 1999 in China, Lanyun (Finch) is a queer artist and researcher working across live art, installation, and curation. Taking multiple personas, she creates conceptually driven performances in everyday or disruptive settings (as Lanyun), and theatrical works rooted in queer nightlife, collective energy, and folk culture (as Finch). Her practice engages with queer identity, taboo, improvisation, and the shifting dynamics between performer and audience, grounded in critical reflection on social structures and the politics of visibility.

Malak Mattar
Born in 1999 in the Gaza Strip, Malak grew up under occupation and military siege. From a family of talented cultural practitioners, she began making art as a teenager during a period of open conflict (Operation Protective Edge, 2014). She soon began to sell her work online and exhibit internationally. She won a scholarship to study political science at Istanbul Aydin University (2018–22) and another to study a Masters of Fine Art at Central Saint Martin’s, London, in 2023.

Soon after arriving in the UK, Malak’s work underwent a dramatic shift in style, subject matter, and palette. While artist-in-residence at An Effort in Central London (December 2023–February 2024), she documented the genocide in her homeland through mostly monochrome drawings and paintings, later combining them into a monumental greyscale work, No Words. This painting stands as a testimony to the apocalyptic horror and displacement endured by Palestinians: “It needs to be completely horrific,” she stated, “otherwise it will not accurately reflect the genocide.”

Malak wrote and illustrated the bestselling children’s book Sitti’s Bird (2021), now in its second print run. In defiance of strict travel restrictions, she has lectured in universities across the USA (2020–21) and has had solo exhibitions in Palestine (2015 onwards); Costa Rica (2015); Great Britain (2017, 2018, 2023, 2024); Sweden (2018); USA (2019, 2021); Germany (2020); Lebanon (2021); Portugal (2022); and Italy (2022). Most recently, she had two concurrent exhibitions in London, including the debut of No Words (March 2024). Her work has been collected, published, and exhibited in numerous group shows worldwide.

https://www.malak-mattar.com/

James Jordan Johnson – Jamaica / United Kingdom
& Momo Ma Pak Yin – Hong Kong / United Kingdom

James Jordan Johnson and Momo Ma Pak Yin create sounds through analogue and hardware. Using field recordings, samples, and transmissions, they explore socially unrecognised cultural links between multicultural traditions, rituals, and histories through sound.

James Jordan Johnson
Born and based in London, James is a recent graduate of the Royal College of Art. His work examines the generative space of concealment and divergence through representation, culture-making, and the relativity of truth and imagination. He explores how genealogies of Caribbean material culture facilitate forms of illegible knowledge systems, employing pre-existing or self-created methods of opacity and slowness.

Awards and recognition include the Artist’s Bursary Scheme from Arts Admin (2020), Venice Fellowship Programme (2022), Frank Bowling Scholarship (2024), and shortlisting for the Donna Lynas residency (2023).

www.jamesjordanjohnson.com

Momo Ma Pak Yin
A Hong Kong-born artist currently based in London, Momo’s practice is rooted in her heritage as part of an indigenous fishing family. She navigates non-human narratives, temporal and spatial communication through objects, focusing on transformations and transitions that shape places over time.

Her research engages with the Asian diasporic experience, exploring heritage and cultural memory through ecological and geopolitical displacement. Investigating sonic warfare and alternative listening modes, she considers sound as a vessel for collective memory and dialogue across fractured geographies. Her work incorporates field recordings, archival images, oral histories, and found objects.

www.mapakyin.com

Solo Artists

Katarina Balunova – Slovakia
Born in 1982, Katarina is an interdisciplinary artist exploring utopias and personal mythology, often drawing on historical narratives and literary stories. Working in painting, installation, performance, video, and poetry, she addresses contemporary social crises while recontextualising the original meanings of symbols and traditions.

Her projects have been shown internationally, including at the 6th Beijing International Art Biennale; Something Else Off Biennale Cairo 2023; Kohta Kunsthalle, Finland; Ely Center of Contemporary Art, USA; Riga Art Space, Latvia; Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, South Korea; MACVAC Contemporary Art Museum, Spain; Mark Rothko Art Centre, Latvia; Dafen Art Museum, Shenzhen; and the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization.

Katarina’s accolades include finalist positions in the Modessque Painting Contest (2013), NOlab Art Contest (2014), and VUB Foundation Painting of the Year (2014); nominations for the Bloom Award (2015, 2017); a Visegrad Fund Scholarship (2018); and the Martin Benka Award (2019). She completed postdoctoral research at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (2025), Academy of Fine Arts Belgrade (2023–24), and Academy of Fine Arts Prague (2021–22). She earned her doctorate at the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia (2019), where she is now an assistant professor.

www.katarinabalunova.com

Sonja Van Kerkhoff – The Netherlands / Australia
Sonja van Kerkhoff is a New Zealand artist based in the Netherlands and Aotearoa. She uses diverse materials and media to produce lyrical works often with a conceptual edge.

www.sonjavank.com

István Kovács – Hungary
Born in 1964, lives and works in Budapest. István has worked in performance art for 24 years and is considered one of Central Europe’s leading practitioners. His work centres on the physical body, life, and death, often combining conceptual depth with striking visual imagery. Using materials such as paint, plastic film, and cellophane, he creates live images with existential themes, addressing humanity’s relationship to birth, death, and rebirth, and the interplay between artificial and natural materials.

https://nrla30.com/the-artists/istvan-kovacs/

Paul Regan – Ireland
Born in Dublin in 1970, Paul holds an MA in Visual Arts Practices from IADT Dublin. His work explores faith, religion, ritual, cultural identity, and misappropriation. In recent years, he has expanded his practice into live performance, focusing on compulsive action through site-specific interventions and activism.

He has performed internationally at Manifesta (Zurich), The Venice Biennale, Art Basel Miami, Documenta (Athens), Venice International Performance Art Week, PAB Open Bergen (NO), Performance Crossings (Prague), Riga Sculpture Quadrennial, Performensk (Minsk), National Palace of Culture (Sofia, BG), and Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart, DE).

www.paulregan.com

Mengting Zhuo – China / United Kingdom
Born in Guangzhou, China and based in London, Mengting Zhuo composes performative situations with site, sound, body and time, in the forms of live art, participatory installation, and concerts. Contingency is used as a method in her work, to explore and disrupt systems of perception, communication, and social relation.

With a background in literature, critical theory, and indie music, her work is as concerned with language as with composition and the unspoken. Often subtle and minimalist, her work pays close attention to the structures that shape encounters, addressing the realities shared by artist and viewer. She has created such encounters in theatres, galleries, and a range of other spaces including public areas, abandoned buildings, residential settings, and online.

Her work has been presented internationally, including South London Gallery, UK; Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong; Shanghai PSA, China; BY ART MATTERS, China; MAO Torino, Italy; Frieze London; esea contemporary, Manchester and venues and organisations in Germany, Netherlands, Czech Republic and Slovakia. She is the co-founder and host of Ming Strike, a Chinese podcast show on contemporary performing arts from the perspective of Asian diasporic artists.

www.zhuomengting.com

Photographer of the event

Saiint — Founder of Pretty Mandem

Saiint uses darkroom processes and archival materials to capture unfiltered, undeniable proof of community, surveillance, and social injustice. Pretty Mandem is an interdisciplinary collaborative practice blending art, activism, and radical investigation to expose hidden truths and amplify marginalized voices. Through photography and partnerships with experts in political science, human rights law, and urban studies, Pretty Mandem transcends conventional boundaries to demand justice.

https://www.prettymandem.com/

Curator of the event

Veronica Cordova de la Rosa – Mexico / United Kingdom

Veronica Cordova de la Rosa is an artist working across live art and performance art, photography, and socially engaged practice. She investigates the impact of images of violence on individual and collective well-being and uses practice-based research to physically manifest affect and translate emotion into embodied performance. Her work has been shown widely in the UK and internationally, including at the Wellcome Collection (London), Serpentine Gallery (London), Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford), Modern Art Oxford, Ashmolean Museum (Oxford), Pushkin House (London), and Chino Cultural Complex (Japan).

She studied Contemporary Arts (practice-based) at Oxford Brookes University (PhD), Interdisciplinary Arts at Oxford Brookes University (MA, Merit), and holds an MFA and Licenciatura (BA equivalent) in Fine Arts from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).

Veronica has lectured in a South London prison and at Oxford Brookes University’s School of Arts. As co-founder and Director of the grassroots non-profit Live Art and Performance Group (LAPER), she curates experimental performance events and has organised small-scale international festivals in academic settings.