Artists in residence

Fedora Akimova is a mixed-media artist whose practice spans installations, video, and sculptural objects. Born in 1987 in Kyiv, she began her creative journey as an illustrator after completing a degree in Printmaking and Graphics. In 2010, she moved to Saint Petersburg to study Theatrical Decoration and Scenography, a discipline that profoundly shaped her artistic vision by integrating diverse techniques and crafts into her work.

Since March 2022, Fedora has been based in Tbilisi (Georgia) and Paris. Before February 24, 2022, her work focused on abstract, plastic experiments exploring philosophical and civilizational themes, often imagining a hypothetical, human-free world as a form of escapism. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine, her subsequent displacement, and the profound upheaval in her personal life prompted her to reexamine her identity and artistic approach. This transformative period led her to develop a new artistic language that engages with political and socially charged themes, reflecting the complexities of the world around her.

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.