Artists in residence

Missla Libsekal, born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is an independent art writer and curator based in Vancouver, Canada. Her recent projects include the Creating Art Archives (2021) conference and the Beyond What We See. Once upon a time, once upon a future (2021) exhibition, presented at Les Abattoirs, Musée – Frac Occitanie Toulouse.

She is the founder of Another Africa (2010 – 2016), a digital platform for writing on and about African and Afro-Diasporic experiences and imaginaries. Her writings on existing and emerging lexicons in contemporary visual practice have been published in The Africa Report, The Guardian, Art Africa, SAVVY art journal, and more.

How will we share the earth? In the past 150 years, humans have significantly altered the planet. Today we singularly occupy key landscapes. The loss of habitat for 1 in 8 animal and plant species, puts 1 million species in direct danger of extinction. In the face of these mass extinctions, what kinds of processes help human and non-human species sustain themselves? And furthermore, what kinds of land-use approaches promote biodiversity in water, air and land? Our biodiversity and sustainability crisis is rooted in extractive systems: colonialism and global capitalism. What alternative practices offer a toolbox towards reconciliation and a course correction out of our dire trajectory? And which histories of living in the land produced diverse environments that in turn created diverse communities? If it is indeed possible for humans to govern and have positive perennial effects on the landscape, which kinds of archives, libraries and knowledge keepers contain these bodies of critical, usable pasts? 

This area of curatorial research is for Missla Libsekal a long-term investigation builds on the exhibition Beyond What We See. Once upon a time, once upon a future (Les Abattoirs, Musée – Frac Occitanie Toulouse, 2021) which considers how artistic strategies can historicise our present-day planetary entanglements and illuminate alternate imaginaries.

Raised in Stockholm, Sweden, Pontus Lidberg trained at the Royal Swedish Ballet School. He holds an MFA in Contemporary Performing Arts from the University of Gothenburg, Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts. He is the Artistic Director of Danish Dance Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Choreographer, filmmaker, dancer and recipient of a 2019 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Pontus Lidberg has firmly established himself as a creative and visionary artist, merging dance and film. 

As a choreographer for the stage, Pontus Lidberg has created works for luminary dance companies including Paris Opera Ballet, New York City Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Vienna Staatsoper Ballet, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, Semperoper Ballet Dresden, Royal Swedish Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Le Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, Acosta Danza, Balletboyz, Beijing Dance Theatre and many more, as well as for his own concert group, Pontus Lidberg Dance.

His work has been commissioned and presented by festivals and venues including Montpellier Danse, Théâtre National de Chaillot, The Joyce Theater, the National Arts Center of Canada, New York City Center’s Fall For Dance Festival, the Havana International Ballet Festival and the Spoleto Festival. His work Siren received a Villanueva Award from UNEAC, The National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, as one of the best performances presented in Cuba in 2018.

His film, The Rain, received numerous awards. The New York Times wrote “memorably, The Rain illustrates what filmed dance can say that staged dance cannot.” His film Labyrinth Within won Best Picture at the Dance on Camera Festival in 2012 in New York City, his first feature film “Written on Water” opened the same festival in 2021.