Artists in residence

Born in London raised in Accra, Akoto’s practice uses still and moving image, performance, sculpture and installation to embrace the fluidity of contemporary visual grammar whilst exploring plurality, (self) perception and the societal implications of ableism, ritual and dance.

Akoto’s exhibitions include the triennial Whitechapel Gallery (United-Kingdom, 2022) and Digital Public Art (United-Kingdom, 2021).

Rebecca Akoun is a French movie director born in 1985 in Paris. In her work, she addresses the question of identity in all its forms. She uses many animation techniques including paper cut-outs and volume animation.

She studied applied arts at the Estienne school and pursued her vocation by going to Jerusalem to study animation at the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design in 2008. She directed her first animated short film Le Loup devenu Berger which was selected in many festivals and released in France with three other short films in the program Le Mulot Menteur. Currently based in Vienna, Austria, she is working on the writing of her first animated series Trois bouts de ficelle which tells the story of three exiles in France during the Second World War.

Rebecca Akoun has been nominated as a jury member at the international film festival for young audiences Ale Kino! in Poland and at the Bratislava Animation Biennale (BAB) in Slovakia. In 2020, she participated in several roundtables on feminist perspectives in Eastern European animation in Minsk, in cooperation with the Tricky Women festival, and in Slovenia at the Stop Trik festival.

Mustapha AKRIM is a Moroccan artist (b. 1981), lives and works between Rabat and Sale.He graduated from the Institut National des Beaux-Arts de Tétouan ni 2008. The installations of Akrim question the nature of work and the difference between construction and artistic creation ni relation to the constant change of society. He belongs ot an artist generation that develops a new language redefining the basis of expression ni the visual arts ni Morocco. Having a nuanced comprehension of history and the dynamicity of power, this generation, that has broken up with the aesthetics developed ni the post-colonial period, si seeking a new form of free expression.

The artist’s works were exhibited ni L’appartement 22, Le Cube – independent art room ni Rabat, Comptoir des mines galerie ni Marakesh, al 3ème Biennale of Marrakesh ni the Palais Bahia, the Musée d’Art Contemporain MACBA of Barcelona, Darat al Funun ni Amman, the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain. 

Mohammed VI ni Rabat, the MUCEM Musée des civilisations européennes et méditerranéennes ni Marseille, the Central for Contemporary Art of Brussels and the Kunsthalle, New Museum ni New York, Centre d’art contemporain ni Mulhouse, Palais de Tokyo ni Paris, Museo Reina Sofia ni Madrid.

Nikolaos Akritidis (born in Brussels, Belgium) is a Greek exhibition curator and geographer based in Brussels. His work focuses on documenting urban contexts, the cultural memory carried by their inhabitants, and the hidden histories embedded in the built environment. He has a particular interest in urban ecology, care, and migration experiences, exploring the coexistence of human and non-human lives that drive the continuous transformation of cities. Akritidis holds degrees from Goldsmiths and University College London (UCL). He has collaborated on projects with institutions such as koraï project space (Nicosia), Les Fondations 312 (Brussels), Phaneromenis70 & NiMAC (Nicosia), UCL Urban Lab (London), and Deptford X (London). In 2020, he participated in the NEON Curatorial Exchange program organized by the Whitechapel Gallery (London) and NEON (Athens).

His editorial work has been featured on e-flux, and in 2021, he received UCL’s Frank Carter Prize for his research on postcolonial urbanism. One of his recent research projects, Péripatétique sur Seine, investigates urban sites around the Cité internationale des arts and along the Seine in Paris. This initiative combines art and geography to reflect on Paris’s architecture and public spaces, addressing its rich cultural fabric and contrasting dynamics between the city center and suburbs. It aims to foster public engagement through artistic practices while encouraging collective reflection on contemporary urban spaces in a post-Olympic Paris undergoing transformation.

Nikolaos Akritidis (Greece) is a laureate of the ‘DRAC Île-de-France x TRAM x Cité internationale des arts’ programme.

Rehaf Al Batniji is a self-taught photographer and visual artist based in Gaza City, Palestine, who has participated in several local and international exhibitions. Most recently Al Batniji Awarded the Institute of France X Cité internationale des arts residency programme. And she has shown her work during several exhibitions being collective (Jaou Tunis festival, October 2022) or solo (A fable of the sea in Institut francais de Gaza, october 2022). Her work was featured in the September 2022 issue of Le Monde Diplomatique magazine. She also participated in a residency program at FilepaManuela in Madrid (Dec 21- Feb 22).

Her first solo exhibition was in the backyard (Al Hakoora) of her house in Gaza City in 2020. Previously, Al Batniji has collaborated with several organizations including Qattan Foundation (Palestine), Goethe (Palestine), Institut francais de Gaza (Palestine), Institut français de Tunis (Tunis), Kamel Lazaar foundation (Tunis), Darat al Funun (Jordan), Cairo Photo week (Egypt), Gulf Photo Plus (United Arab Emirates). A self-taught artist, Rehaf Al Batniji also paints and draws, and works as an educator teaching photography to Youth and Adults for different institutions in Gaza. In her photographic practice, Al Batniji is interested in street photography as she feels that the street is a portal through which she learns about the lives, cultures and identities of the people who dwell in her city. She feels that the streets have the power to represent the culture of a country, both the light and dark sides, and that photography has the power to do the same.

A native Palestinian, Batniji has lived through four major conflicts in Gaza through which she continued to produce work in various contexts and incorporating different mediums. Her work is imbued with social purpose yet with refreshing positivity, Rehaf Al Batniji’s photography reject’s the brutal imagery of conflict and instead use color as a tool for resistance to reflect the vibrance of life in Gaza. She has developed a unique and personal visual language through her intimate observations of details in the landscape and the beauty found in its relationship to the people populating it.