Project Artists:

MyLoan Dinh (USA/Vietnam) - visual artist, project founder / curator

Till Schmidt-Rimpler (Germany) - artistic director Moving Poets, choreographer

 

Partner:

Moving Poets (Berlin/Charlotte) - multi disciplinary

 

Invited Artists:

Since the inception of the project, immense interest and support for international collaboration among artists, educators and creative organizations have developed. Participation is site specific as the project migrates to different locations.

 

Migration 5 (Charlotte, NC, February 27 - March 1, 2020) - HEAVEN stage production artists

 

Migration 4  (Charlotte, NC, May 3-June 15, 2019) 

Visual Artists

Nico Amortegui (Colombia)

Luis Coray (Switzerland)

MyLoan Dinh (Vietnam)

Michelle Gregory (USA)

Cannupa Hanska Luger (USA)

Susanne Roewer (Germany)

Rosalia Torres-Weiner (Mexico)

 

Film: Dellair Youssef (Syria)

 

Performers, Composers & Musicians

Tanja Bechtler (Switzerland)

Todd Clouser (USA)

Tom Constanten (USA)

Aron Cruz (Mexico)

Hernan Hecht (Argentina)

Milad Khawam (Syria)

Till Schmidt-Rimpler (Germany)

Bob Teixeira (USA)

Alyce Cristina Vallejo (USA)

 

Poet: Chuck Sullivan (USA)

 

Artists Bios 

 

Nico Amortegui (Colombia)

Nico Amortegui was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, and has worked in the United States since the 1990s. His current artistic foci include large-scale paintings on canvas or wood panels, and sculpting and wood-working with found objects. As an immigrant, he became acutely aware of the challenges faced by those aspiring to achieve the "American Dream". Throughout his practice, he provides snapshots of lifestyles repeatedly tasked with transitions—his own and of those he encountered along the way. He creates portraits of those who defied the odds. Amortegui's joyful yet jarring work, often filled with unapologetic color, is an immediate product of his expressed energies—that is to say: there are no sketches or previous drawings. Working solely in the present moment, urgency, rawness and pace transfer to the canvas. His latest public commission can be seen at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. His work has been shown throughout the the United States, notably at the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum (Washington DC), Levine Museum of the New South, McColl Center for Arts and Innovation, Mint Museum, Duke Energy Children's Museum (Cincinnati), and Art Basel (Espitia Gallery, Miami). He now resides in Charlotte with his wife and two daughters.

 

Luis Coray (Switzerland)

For decades, the Swiss artist Luis Coray has made a name for himself as a visual artist and performer. His paintings register an interplay of light and shadow, and dialogues between past and present, loss and recovery. Coray's sensitive visual language often reflects his unique cultural identity: Romansh, an ethnic minority from the remote Swiss Alpine regions who speak an ancient endangered language. He studied art history at the University of Zurich and visual design at the Zurich University of the Arts. Additionally, Coray has trained with contemporary luminaries: conceptual artist Not Vital at the Academy of the Art School Liechtenstein and performance artist Tino Sehgal at the Beyeler-Museum, Riehen. His work has been exhibited in Switzerland and Germany and can be found in private and public collections including Graubündner Cantonal Bank, City of Chur (Switzerland), Canton Graubünden, the Lia Rumantscha Institute and RTR Radiotelevisiun Svizra Rumantscha, Cuira. His awards include the 2015 Arts Award from Canton of Grisons, Berlin Department of Culture Studio residency and the 2008 Cultural Contribution prize in Grisons. He lives in Chur with his wife and three daughters.

 

MyLoan Dinh (Vietnam)

MyLoan Dinh was born in Saigon, Vietnam. On April 30, 1975, during the Fall of Saigon, she and her family fled by sea, eventually resettling in Charlotte, NC. Majoring in visual arts, Dinh studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the School of Arts and Design at Wollongong University New South Wales, Australia. She is the founder of the international multidisciplinary arts project, We See Heaven Upside Down. Her mixed-media work explores the porous boundary between personal and collective history. Reflecting on her experiences as an immigrant and woman of color, her work often addresses everyday manifestations of cultural identity, memory and displacement. She has exhibited internationally and her work can be found in private collections in the United States, Germany and Switzerland.  Her awards include: Arts & Science Council Regional Artist Project Grant (Charlotte, NC), Berlin Department of Arts and Culture Artist Grant (Treptow-Köpenick), and the Partnership for Democracy Project Grant (Berlin) and Arts & Science Council 2018 Cultural Vision Grant (in collaboration with Moving Poets). Dinh is a member of the Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA) and the BKK, Professional Association of Visual Artists Berlin. She and her husband, Till Schmidt-Rimpler, founder and artistic director of Moving Poets, have creative projects in the USA and Germany. 

 

Michelle Gregory (USA)

Michelle "Bunny" Gregory was born and raised in Charlotte, NC. She graduated with a degree in fashion illustration from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. After her degree, she was the head of design for the special events firm, Creatrix. Since 2000, she has collaborated with Moving Poets as a costume designer. In 2010, she was invited for a three-week artist residency in Berlin, Germany. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, Bunny realized there weren't any known venues for Black artists to express themselves in Charlotte. Because of her love for hip hop and pop art, she opened her own venue, the UNDERGROUND, in 2014, which quickly became a staple platform for Charlotte-based urban artists, musicians and poets. In 2017, Bunny was dubbed "Queen Mother of Charlotte's Underground Hip Hop" by Creative Loafing Magazine. She is currently working on creating a "Harlem Renaissance" on wheels: the UNDERGROUND Mobile Art Studio & Gallery for young black artists, serving low income youth in West Charlotte where she grew up. Her mixed-media studio work is heavily influenced by Afrocentric culture addressing issues of racial and economic disparity, and often utilizes illustration, comic book-style drawings, pen & ink and collage on salvaged boards.

 

Cannupa Hanska Luger (USA)

Cannupa Hanska Luger is a New Mexico-based, multi-disciplinary artist. Raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, he is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Austrian, and Norwegian descent. Through social collaboration and by responding to timely and site-specific issues, Luger produces multi-pronged projects of many forms. Through monumental installations that incorporate ceramics, video, sound, fiber, steel, and cut-paper, Luger interweaves performance and political action to communicate stories about 21st-century Indigeneity. Luger is the recipient of the NYC Museum of Arts and Design’s 2018 Burke Prize, an inaugural award celebrating ‘highly accomplished work, strong use of materials, innovative processes, and conceptual rigor and relevance’. Luger has exhibited internationally, including the Princeton University Art Museum, Washington Project for the Arts, Art Mûr (Montreal), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (AR), Orenda Gallery (Paris), Autry Museum of the American West, and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights (Atlanta). He lectures and participates in residencies around the globe and his work is collected internationally. Luger holds a BFA in studio arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts.

 

Susanne Roewer (Germany)

Susanne Roewer was born in Bad Schlema, Germany, and graduated with a master's degree in sculpture at the Universität der Künste, Berlin. Via extensive research, her work critically references historical figures and events, folk art and fables, as well as current socio-political debates. Her sculptures are rooted in her explorations of elementary materials, such as metal, stone or glass, combining figurative and abstract elements. Roewer’s works display conceptual wit alongside an artistic sensibility for materiality. She was the co-founder of the G7 Berlin Network Gallery, together with fellow artists Gregor Hildebrand and Roger Wardin, before moving to Switzerland to collaborate with various collectors and sponsorship programs. Her works have been exhibited internationally, notably the Fort Wayne Museum of Art (Indiana, together with Georges Beasley), the Fondacion Abanico (Geneva), at Il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri (Italy), Momentum Hot Glass (Toledo/Ohio), Art Basel (Switzerland and Miami), Farhang Foundation at the Craft and Folk Museum (Los Angeles) and a solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Kreis Gütersloh. Roewer lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Parallel to the exhibition at Elder Gallery of Contemporary Art, Susanne Roewer will be presented by Galerie Kornfeld in Berlin. The opening is part of the international Gallery Weekend Berlin 2019.

 

Rosalia Torres-Weiner (Mexico)

Rosalia Torres-Weiner is an artist, activist and community leader. Her work is featured in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum and has been exhibited in venues including the McColl Center for Arts and Innovation, Levine Museum of the New South, UNCC’s Projective Eye Gallery, the City of Raleigh Museum, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington D.C. Her public murals celebrate the rich history of her native Mexico and the changing demographics of the US-American South. She uses her art to document social conditions and raise awareness about issues affecting immigrant communities, including family separation, racism and overcoming stereotypes. Her work was recently featured in a solo exhibition at Georgia College’s Leland Gallery in October 2018. She has been a guest speaker for the North Carolina ASC, Johnson & Wales University, George Washington University, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, and the Southern Foodways Alliance.  Through her Red Calaca Mobile Art Studio, a 24-foot "Art Truck", she takes the arts directly to people in under-served immigrant communities in Charlotte.

 

Film:

Dellair Youssef (Syria)

Dellair Youssef is a director and writer born in Damascus, Syria, from which he fled in 2011. He has directed several films, including ‘The Princes of the Bees’, ‘Exile’, ‘Banyas: The Beginnings’, and ‘Clothesline’, which have been screened at multiple international film festivals. Youssef is also the author of ‘Tales of this Time’ (2014), which shares his life, travels and reflections on the Syrian revolution. His articles and essays are regularly featured in Arabic blogs and newspapers, as well as in a selection of German newspapers and magazines. Youssef studied Ecology at Damascus University and film studies in Syria and the Netherlands. Alongside his professional work, he has volunteered with NGOs in Syria and Lebanon since 2007. He is now based in Berlin, Germany.

 

Music:

Todd Clouser (USA)

A native of Minneapolis, MN, Todd Clouser is a prolific composer, guitarist, songwriter and performer based in Mexico City. Combining elements of rock, jazz blues, spoken word and improvised music, Clouser has performed at music festivals across the globe, alongside luminaries including John Lurie, John Zorn, Flea, Cyro Baptista, John Medeski, and Keb Mo. Clouser's music trio, A Love Electric, explores his songwriting while honoring the jazz tradition's inquisitiveness and fearlessness, together with Latin Grammy award winner, Hernan Hecht, on drums and Aaron Cruz on bass. Mexico City's La Jornada named them "one of the most important acts of recent years". The trio has released 6 records on labels in the US and Mexico while performing nearly 1,000 concerts over the span of 7 years.

 

Philanthropy and community outreach have been important facets of Clouser's work in Mexico and beyond. With the founding of his "Music Mission" initiative, he and patrons have donated thousands of dollars worth of instruments, educational materials, workshops and basic needs to support communities in Nicaragua, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Mexico City and Durango. He is also the founder of Ropeadope Sur, a record label based in Mexico City which focuses on showcasing under-recognized Mexican musicians. The first act they signed, for instance, was Los Cardencheros de Sapioriz, an acapella group singing slave-era songs on the ranches of northern Mexico.

 

Milad Khawam (Syria)

Milad Khawam is a trumpeter, duduk player and composer from Damascus, Syria. Escaping the Syrian war in 2015, he immigrated to Berlin, Germany. Khawam studied Classical and Arabic music in Damascus. Since 2010, he played principal trumpet with many orchestras in Europe and the Middle East, including the Berlin Philharmonic. He performed with different fusion groups at festivals across Germany, such us Morgenland-Festival 2016, Karneval der Kulturen 2016 and Xjazz-Fest Berlin 2018. He also loves to produce electronic music. Khawam's compositions have been played by numerous bands in various festivals and his original soundtrack for the short film, "No Monsters in Berlin", won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival 2017. Next to composing music for We See Heaven Upside Down with Todd Clouser, Milad is currently working on his new album, "To the West".

 

Till Schmidt-Rimpler (Germany)

Till Schmidt Rimpler is a choreographer, director, and musician born in Dortmund, Germany. Schmidt-Rimpler studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich and Codarts University of the Arts Rotterdam. He was a member of the Dutch National Ballet and a principal artist with North Carolina Dance Theatre. He has choreographed for Michigan Opera Theatre, Opera Carolina and Children's Theatre Charlotte. He was a lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a professor at the Universidad Miguel Hernandez in Altea, Spain. In 1996, Schmidt-Rimpler founded Moving Poets in Charlotte (together with actor/director Randell Haynes and NC Poet Laureate Chuck Sullivan). In 2011, he and his wife, visual artist MyLoan Dinh, opened Moving Poets Berlin. In 2014, they founded NOVILLA, an international center for arts, creativity and exchange. Spearheaded by Schmidt-Rimpler, Moving Poets has created, produced and/or curated a wide variety of artistic projects across the USA and Germany, including: stage productions, creative workshops, festivals, youth programs, and music concerts. One of Schmidt-Rimpler's central goals is to bring together artists from diverse fields, cultures and age groups by building communities and facilitating cross-cultural exchanges.

 

Poetry:

Chuck Sullivan (USA)

Sullivan was born in NYC and graduated from Belmont Abbey College, NC. After graduating from college, he spent a year as a VISTA volunteer, working with migrant laborers in Florida and West Virginia. He completed his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina/Greensboro. In 1980, A Catechism of Hearts won South Carolina's Best Poetry Book of the year, and Longing for the Harmonies, received North Carolina Poetry Council’s best book award for 1992. In 1989, PBS filmed and broadcast a documentary about him, also titled Longing for the Harmonies. His poetry has appeared in Esquire, Rolling Stone, Texas Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, Carolina Quarterly, International Poetry Review, and numerous other publications.  In 2004 Chuck was awarded the Mary Frances Hobson Award in recognition of his achievements in literature and in 2005 was honored with the Sam Regan Award for lifetime achievement in arts and letters. A gifted educator, Sullivan was the NEA Poet-in-Residence at Butler University in Indiana, and is currently Poet-in- Residence in North and South Carolina. Every summer since 1979, Chuck teaches poetry and philosophy at North Carolina Governor’s School East, where he is chairman of the English Department. 

 

Past Migrations:

Migration 3 -  (Charlotte, March 20- July 5, 2017)

Lee Baumgarten (USA) Co-headliner/lead artist - visual artist/educator

Nico Amortegui  (Colombia) - visual artist

Raed Al-Rawi  (Iraq) - visual artist/cartoonist/educator

MyLoan Dinh (Vietnam) - Co-headliner/lead artist - visual artist

Cannupa Hanska Luger (USA/ Turtle Island) - visual artist  

Phillip Larrimore (USA) - visual artist/poet/ writer 

Susanne Roewer (Germany) - visual artist

Dellair Youssef (Syria) - film maker

Hanna Tadrous Girgis- (Egypt) visual artist, collaborative artwork  

Tina Roozbehi (Iran) - visual artist, collaborative artwork      

CPCC Art & Design Students- Collaborative Installation Project  

Clay Daniel (USA) & CPCC Dance students

Alyce Christina Vallejo (USA)

Clayton Venhuizen (USA)

 

Migration 2 - (Berlin, July 9-17)

Rula Ali (Syria) - visual artist

John Balaban (USA) -  poet, educator 

Lee Baumgarten (USA) - visual artist/educator

MyLoan Dinh (Vietnam) - visual artist

Denise Dröge (Germany) - theatre artist, educator

Liz Crossley (South Africa) - visual artist

Saeed Foroghi (Iran) - visual artist

Johannes Gerard (Germany) - visual artist

Maya Gomez (Spain) - dancer

Jacqueline Heer (Switzerland) - visual artist

Hannes Hoelzl (Italy) - composer, sound installation artist, educator

Moseke&Pelda (Germany) - visual arts duo

Ismael Miquidade (Mozambique) - photojournalist

Susanne Roewer (Germany) - visual artist

Dellair Youssef (Syria) - film maker

MMR -  Jan Romberg (Germany), Eric Wilcox (USA) - - pantomime duo, movement artists

Grünen featuring Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky (Germany): Achim Kaufmann – piano, Robert Landfermann – bass, Christian Lillinger – drums, „Luten“ Petrowsky – reeds

Shira Z. Carmel And Her Brasserie (Israel) - singer, song writer, musicians

Bye Beneco (South Africa) - musicians

umlaut Bigband (Germany/France):

Reeds- Pierre Antoine Badaroux (direction), Tobias Delius, Pierre Borel, Paul Roth, Benjamin Dousteyssier – saxes, clarinet, brass

Trumpets - Brice Pichard, Louis Laurain, Emil Strandberg – trumpets 

Trombones - Fidel Fourneyron, Michael Ballue – trombones

Rhythm- Bruno Ruder – piano / Romain Vuillemin – guitar / Joel Grip – double-bass / Antonin Gerbal – drums

 

Mary Fleming (USA) - Guest writer 

 

Migration 1 - (Berlin, June 4 - 19)

Rula Ali (Syria) - visual artist

Lee Baumgarten (USA) - visual artist/educator

MyLoan Dinh (Vietnam) -  visual artist

Saeed Foroghi (Iran) - visual artist

Susanne Hood (Canada) - dance artist, musician, educator

Adrian Krok (Poland) - musician

Joy Lohmann (Germany) - social sculptor, street artist

Horst Nonnenmacher (Germany) - musician

Edith Steyer (Germany) - musician

Chuck Sullivan (USA) - poet, educator

Dellair Youssef (Syria) - film maker

 

 

 

MyLoan Dinh - project artist/ project founder

Dinh was born in Saigon, Vietnam. During the war, she and her family fled by sea to refugee camps in Subic Bay and Wake Island in the South China Sea. Later they were brought to Camp Pendleton, California, known as Tent City, one of four large camps for Vietnamese refugees. From there, the family immigrated to Boone, eventually settling in Charlotte, North Carolina. Majoring in visual arts, Dinh studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the School of Arts and Design at Wollongong University New South Wales, Australia. Her mixed-media work explores the porous boundary between personal and collective history. Reflecting on her experiences as an immigrant and woman of color, her work often addresses everyday manifestations of cultural identity, memory and displacement. She has exhibited internationally and her work can be found in private collections in the United States, Germany and Switzerland.  Her awards include: Arts & Science Council Regional Artist Project Grant (Charlotte, NC), Berlin Department of Arts and Culture Artist Grant (Treptow-Köpenick), and the Partnership for Democracy Project Grant (Berlin) and Arts & Science Council 2018 Cultural Vision Grant (in collaboration with Moving Poets). Dinh is a member of the Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA) and the BKK, Professional Association of Visual Artists Berlin. She and her husband, Till Schmidt-Rimpler, founder and artistic director of Moving Poets, have creative projects in the USA and Germany. 

Till Schmidt Rimpler - project artist

Till Schmidt Rimpler is a choreographer, director, and musician born in Dortmund, Germany. Schmidt-Rimpler studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich and Codarts University of the Arts Rotterdam. He was a member of the Dutch National Ballet and a principal artist with North Carolina Dance Theatre. He has choreographed for Michigan Opera Theatre, Opera Carolina and Children's Theatre Charlotte. He was a lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a professor at the Universidad Miguel Hernandez in Altea, Spain. In 1996, Schmidt-Rimpler founded Moving Poets in Charlotte (together with actor/director Randell Haynes and NC Poet Laureate Chuck Sullivan). In 2011, he and his wife, visual artist MyLoan Dinh, opened Moving Poets Berlin. In 2014, they founded NOVILLA, an international center for arts, creativity and exchange. Spearheaded by Schmidt-Rimpler, Moving Poets has created, produced and/or curated a wide variety of artistic projects across the USA and Germany, including: stage productions, creative workshops, festivals, youth programs, and music concerts. One of Schmidt-Rimpler's central goals is to bring together artists from diverse fields, cultures and age groups by building communities and facilitating cross-cultural exchanges. 

Moving Poets - partner arts organization

Moving Poets is an international community of artists and creative professionals of different disciplines, cultures and age groups. Founded in Charlotte in 1996, the arts organizaion is currently based in Charlotte, USA (Moving Poets Charlotte) and in Berlin, Germany (Moving Poets Berlin).

 

Mission: We strive to tell stories that are meaningful to both the artists and the audience, support the presentation and creation of high quality contemporary art and serve as a cultural arts incubator to collectively create new works. Bringing local, national and international artists and creative professionals of different disciplines and cultures together, we open possibilities to be inspired, to try unfamiliar paths and to create and present together and individually new works. Moving Poets works with both established and emerging artists and creative professionals, especially from the visual arts, music, dance, theatre, photography, film and multi-media. We see authenticity, quality, respect and curiosity for others and other views as significant, as well as the willingness for constructive discourse and a welcoming attitude towards the audience. 

Rula Ali (migration 1-2)

Ali was born in Qamishli, Syria. She received her B.A. from the Faculty of English Literature, Damascus University and studied sculpture at the Walid Ezzat Institute where she earned her degree. Ali has participated in several group exhibitions including the Damascus International Symposium in 2012. She was the assistant curator in organizing the Imagio mundo exhibition, showing 140 Syrian Artists as part of the Venice Biennale. When the uprising started, she worked for two years on the website 'Syria Untold', archiving the the creative resistance and civil movement in Syria. Ali lives in Berlin and is currently sculpting with cloth, creating modules made of textile, using and mixing patterns, embroidery, patchwork with contemporary themes and Syrian Folk art.

Nico Amortegui  (migration 3, 4)

Amortegui was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, and has worked in the United States since the 1990s. His current artistic foci include large-scale paintings on canvas or wood panels, and sculpting and wood-working with found objects. As an immigrant, he became acutely aware of the challenges faced by those aspiring to achieve the "American Dream". Throughout his practice, he provides snapshots of lifestyles repeatedly tasked with transitions—his own and of those he encountered along the way. He creates portraits of those who defied the odds. Amortegui's joyful yet jarring work, often filled with unapologetic color, is an immediate product of his expressed energies—that is to say: there are no sketches or previous drawings. Working solely in the present moment, urgency, rawness and pace transfer to the canvas. His latest public commission can be seen at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. His work has been shown throughout the the United States, notably at the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum (Washington DC), Levine Museum of the New South, McColl Center for Arts and Innovation, Mint Museum, Duke Energy Children's Museum (Cincinnati), and Art Basel (Espitia Gallery, Miami). He now resides in Charlotte with his wife and two daughters.

John Balaban (migration 1-2)

Balaban is the author of twelve books of poetry and prose, which have won The Academy of American Poets' Lamont Prize and a National Poetry Series Selection. His poetry has received two nominations for the National Book Award.  His Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems won the 1998 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.  Among his publications are poems in The Atlantic,  The New York Review of Books, The Hudson Review and, most recently,  Granta and Little Star. He was named the 2001-2004 National Artist for the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. In 2003, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. In addition to writing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, he is a translator of Vietnamese poetry, and a past president of the American Literary Translators Association. He is also a director of the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation. Balaban is Emeritus Professor of English at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.  

Lee Baumgarten (migration 1-2/ Co-headline/lead artist migration 3)

Baumgarten is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina and his studio work is represented in a large number of private and corporate collections throughout the USA and abroad. He received his BFA from Columbus College of Art & Design, Columbus, Ohio and graduate studies at West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV. In 2013 he received a National Grant from Dunspaugh Dalton Foundation to produce a Conference at the University of North Carolina Charlotte Center City Building to promote “creativity in the public schools” and support a Youth Education & Empowerment initiative with a focus on integrating Art into the Science, Technology Engineering and Math curriculum (STEM to STEAM) “Innovations & Creativity” in public education. 

Liz Crossley (migration 2)

The media artist, Liz Crossley, was born in Kimberley, South Africa. After studying fine art and doing a post graduate teacher's diploma at the University of Cape Town (1967 – 1972), she got her Master of Fine Art in Painting and Art History at Rhodes University. Inbetween she did a short course in photography at the Free Academy in the Hague. In London she initiated Womens' Studio and Womens' Art History courses with the Inner London Education Authority and held lectures on women artists at the Universtiy of London. In 1985 she moved to Berlin and studied at the Departement of  Further Education for Artists, Hochschule der Künste.  

 

"One of my ways of working is in collaboration with other artists, writers, archeologists, musicians, historians, young and older people. I like to drop ideas that interest me into the pool of our communal consciousness. Each one ripples back, making their own individual response, communicating with the other actors, as well as the public, both passing and those who stay longer and join in the process. Ripples from all angles, creating a faceted water surface, for a while. 

Migration has been a core theme for me for many years"

 

Crossly is the coordinator for Signs and Wonder - open interactive workshops and part of the community outreach project for "We See Heaven Upside Down".

The stone, that the project “SIGNS and WONDERS” is throwing into the pool this time, is the question, “What do new people bring to the environment, individually and as groups?”  Let's see, look, hear, listen, join in. Let's make marks and respond to the marks left by others and go with the flow, here on the Spree!” 

Denise Dröge (migration 2)

Denise Dröge has been working as a freelance graduate drama and dance teacher and lives in Berlin. Characterized by her long-time dance training and her studies in Art Therapy / Art Education - direction Performing Arts at HKS Otterberg, combines theater with movement, dance and choreography towards a holistic playful and educational approach. Dröge has worked under varying circumstances in Germany and abroad. She initiated and lead several projects such as a mask theatre with children traumatized by an earthquake in Peru or a play with street children in South Africa. In Germany she was active at the city theatre and was engaged within the open community. 

 

The teaching of the performing arts as a means of expression and the joy of it´s own artistic debate are the main focus in her work.  The joint work is a creative research area and experimental field, approaching and exploring issues, searching for images and be taken at the end on stage by it´s own artistic expression statements. For the past two year she has been developing a multitude of ways for people from varying cultural backgrounds to meet and enter a meaningful dialog using artistic expression.

Mary Fleming (guest writer)

Fleming was born in Chicago. After school on the East Coast, she attended Colby College in Maine where she received a BA degree in English literature. During a year spent at the University of Exeter, she met her first husband and moved to Paris in 1981. After several years as a freelance journalist and consultant, she worked as the French representative for an American foundation, The German Marshall Fund. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the French Fulbright Commission and of the NGO Bibliothèques sans Frontières. She is the author of Someone Else, 2014 and writes a blog about her life and observations in Paris and Berlin. 

Saeed Foroghi (migration 1-2)

Foroghi was born in Kerman, Iran. He studied Architecture at the University in Tehran and at Painting and Graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden.  His work is expressed in a number of different media and has been exhibited in Dresden, Cologne, Berlin and internationally including at the Rockefeller Center for Contemporary Arts. Foroghi was a Bloom Art Award finalist and DAAD Prize recipient. He lives and works in Berlin.

Johannes Gerard (migration 2)

Gerard was educated at the School of Print and Design, Cologne, Germany and Dun Laoghaire School of Art and Design (now IADT), Dublin, Ireland. In the years between 1977-2010 he lived and worked in Dublin, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Taipei, Melbourne and The Hague. In 2011 and 2012, he had two long working stays in Vadodara, India and Hangzhou, China. Between 1981 and 2010 Gerard worked as an art teacher in Dublin, Taipei and The Hague. Until 2008 his works were in the disciplines of painting, sculpture and graphics. After 2008 turning towards photography and installation. In 2014 was his first video films and performance works in collaboration with Hsin-Ying Tsai and Yu-I Kao. In 2015 together with graduate theater educator Denise Dröge developed a workshop concept based on the keywords, Borders, Here& Now and three different art disciplines: Land Art / Performance social sculpture and video. Gerard lives and works in Berlin and The Hague, Netherlands.

Hanna Tadrous Girgis (migration 3)

Girgis was born in 1949 in the Historic Alexandria City, Egypt. He refined his own visual and conceptual vocabulary that emerged through focusing on intersection between  architecture, sculpture, printing graphics, and photography, which he called "Plasto-photography  i.e.,  printing with light on photographic paper using  man  made  films  etching  as  well  as regular photo films. He exhibited in Alexandria as early as 1976, at "Fikrun wa Fan Art Gallery" at the Alexandria Goethe Institute. He recieved a BA in Philosophy & Sociology at Alexandria University, and MA in Psychoanalysis at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt, also graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Stage Design & Performing Arts. He obtained a post graduate degree in Art Criticism at the Academy of Art in Giza- later matriculated into a Masters Degree by Jyvascula University in 1992. Girgis has an extensive history in teaching, creative arts & letters activity, and continues  exploring printing and painting applications and theory.

"If  we  succeed  to  re-connect  to  the  ever lasting roots of the childhood of humanity, we can then drink from the  pure stream of art.  In reality, this is what  I  have experienced in all the lands of Austria, USA, Canada, Germany, Libya, Greece, Malta, Tunisia, China, Scandinavia/Finland, Luxor- Aswan “Nubia”, and in my "Home Land Egypt".

 

Maya Gomez (migration 2)

Maya Gomez was born in Switzerland. She studied at the Professional Conservatoire of Institut del Teatre Barcelona, Spain. She has worked with IT Dansa Company, Barcelona and performed in the Opera Theatre del Liceu Barcelona; pieces from Jirí Kylián, Ohad Naharin, Rafael Bonachela, Alexandre Eckman, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Stijn Celis and participated in the creation of 0’1234  - Habemus Corpus Company directed by Miquel G.Font, Spain.
Gomez has worked as freelance dancer in Berlin; performing for Art Changé Company, Moving Poets Berlin and Radio Doria directed by Jan Josef Liefers. In 2014, she performed her solo Believe in the Gdansk Dance Competition Festival and in the Internationale Tanzfestival Ingolstadt. Since 2013, she has collaborated with Sasha Waltz & Guests and her repertoire includes Sacre,
Jagden & Formen, Romeo & Juliette, L’après midi d’un Faune, Continu. and participated in the project, installations and objects for the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe. She performed Körper from Sasha for the Opera Swedish Ballet in the Kungliga Operan. Her newest project is a collaboration with Blenard Azizaj, creating and presenting their own work in Berlin and around Europe.

 

Jacqueline Heer (migration 2)

Jacqueline Heer is a visual artist who’s work has been collected and exhibited internationally. Museums shows include the North Carolina Museum of Contemporary Art, SECCA (South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art), The Light Factory Museum for Photography. Major solo exhibitions include Stockeregg Gallery, Zürich, Art Basel Miami, Bill Lowe Gallery Atlanta GA / Santa Barbara, CA. Multimedia installations/performances include: The Knight Gallery, Charlotte NC, The Light Factory, Moving Poets, Queens College, New York.  Site specific commissions and corporate collections include Bank of America, The Bechtler Museum, Wachovia Bank, Duke Power Co, Mary Riddle Duke Foundation, Bank Syz, Geneva Switzerland, various hospitals and public buildings. Her work is in various private collections in US and EU.

 

Other activities include: founding and operating the Limbo, an alternative Gallery and the Eight Street Art Collective in Charlotte, NC,  founding  “ping-pong" between Art and Knowledge, Berlin, guest professorship at HISK, Antwerp, Belgium. Reviews and critical texts include: Essays by John Grande, Montreal Canada, Richard Vine, Art in America, Reviews by Matthias Harder in Art of America, by Marc Spiegler in Art News, by A.D. Coleman, Hamptons Country Review, Art Papers.

 Heer has been travelling extensively including Central- and South-America, Russia and Japan and now lives and works in North Carolina, US and Berlin, Germany.

Susanne Hood (migration 1)

Based in Montreal, Hood is a performer in dance and music and was the artistic director of her interdisciplinary performance company hum dansoundart from 2000 till 2013. She began her career as a member of the Toronto Dance Theatre from 1991 through 1995. Independently, she has performed the works of various Canadian choreographers, composers, and filmmakers (including Tedd Robinson, John Oswald, Nilan Perera, and Phillip Barker). For over a decade, she has been synthesizing voice and movement into a dynamic practice through which she creates intimate, raw and sensual performance work. Her choreography, compositions, and interdisciplinary collaborations have been presented locally, nationally, and internationally on stage and film since 1991. Awards include the 1998 K.M. Hunter Emerging Artists Award in Dance and the 2006 Dora Mavor Moore Award (DMM) for Outstanding Performance in Dance. In 2008 Susanna was the recipient of the Canada Council’s Victor Martin Lynch-Staunton Award for Outstanding Achievement in the field of Dance. She is a part-time teacher at both the School Toronto Dance Theatre and l’École de Danse Contemporain de Montréal. 

 

Susanne Hood will be performing  "s o u n d  & m omen t u m" at the opening reception of Migration 1, June 4 at Novilla with musicians:

Edith Steyer (Germany), Saxophone 

Horst Nonnenmacher (Germany), Kontrabass

Adrian Krok (Poland), Drums

Hannes Hoelzl (migration 2)

Hoelzl is an experimental musician and media artist. He is interested in languages as transformative bodies, media archives, and in the ways contemporary humans deal with the overwhelming masses of information. He works in sound installation, live performance, spatial composition and development/hacking of musical soft- and hardware, primarily relying on generative methods. Performing on self-devised electronic/digital instruments in contexts of contemporary, improvised and jazz music, Hoelzl is member of PowerBooks_UnPlugged, Trio Brachiale and Kairos Theory, and has been touring internationally. His installations have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout Europe and east Asia, and he has been an academic educator since 2009. Currently, he is assistant professor for Generative Arts/computational arts at UdK Berlin. 

Joy Lohmann (migration 1)

Lohmann is a German social sculptor, street artist and founder of the maritime maker platform Sealand Multiversity. His installations, participatory processes and interventions in public space always address contemporary societal issues. His work is providing new perspectives and experiential realms for the audience to expand personal horizons and to experience aspects of a collaborative, caring/sharing society. Lohmann started the construction of asap-island in Goa/India with local partners and an international community, co-creating sustainable floating habitats, made out of waste. Inspired by the climate-change related rise of sea-levels, asap-island is meant as a pilot project, research platform and design-study for bottom-up development help.  He develops cultural tools and symbols for societal transformation, called “Social Capital Sculptures”, cofounded “Integrated Art” as a genre and a stock company at the same time break down the borders between art and real life.

Cannupa Hanska Luger (migration 3)

Luger was born in North Dakota on the Standing Rock Reservation. He comes from Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Austrian, and Norwegian descent. Luger's unique, ceramic­-centric, but ultimately multidisciplinary work tells provocative stories of complex Indigenous identities coming up against 21st Century imperatives, mediation, and destructivity. Luger creates socially conscious work that hybridizes his identity as an American Indian in tandem with global issues. Using his art as a catalyst, Luger invites the public to challenge expectations and misinterpretations imposed upon Indigenous peoples by historical and contemporary colonial social structures. Luger was the recipient of the 2016 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artists Fellowship Award and was the 2015 Rasmuson Foundation Artist in Residence. Luger graduated with honors from The Institute of American Indian Arts in 2011 with a BFA focusing in studio ceramics. Luger is also in the permanent collections of The North America Native Museum Zürich, Switzerland; The Denver Art Museum Denver, CO; The Museum of Contemporary Native Arts Santa Fe, NM; and The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art Norman, OK.

Phillip Larrimore (migration 3)

Larrimore is a painter/ poet/ and critic residing in Wingate, NC. He has designed gardens on the West and East coasts, formed a video-documentary business specializing in recording modern dance and ballet in NYC. Phillip writes extensively for both national and local periodicals concerning visual art, classical music, and poetry. The major body of his recent expressive work is formed with overlapping painted screens.

Moseke&Pelda (migration 2)

Matthias Moseke, graduate artist and Mathias Pelda, B.A. in arts and philosophy, have been sharing a studio since 2005 and are continually developing artistic processes and positions.

 

Matthias Moseke and Mathias Pelda create, dream, discover, penetrate, expand, evaluate, decide, convey, provoke, feel, connect, demonstrate, see, search, and find chaotically, freely, stubbornly, common art. Through intense analysis of informal painting, often involving guest artists, they achieve an essential, figurative expression which centers on human individuality and truthfulness, creating complex character studies, focused portraits of being, witnesses of the moment. This artistic duo expresses critical statements about relevant current issues through blunt and candid objects and installations. Matthias Moseke and Mathias Pelda live and work in Berlin.

Ismael Miquidade (migration 2)

Miquidade was born in Mozambique. He is a photojournalist and studied documentary photography at the National School of Photography in Maputo. Between 2008 and 2010 he worked in a penitentiary where he had the opportunity to teach photography to a group of prisoners. The social reintegration program was funded by the Italian Cooperation for Africa and the Mozambican Ministry of Justice.  With the Patronage of Amnesty International, the British Council, the European Commission and the International Organization for Migration, Miquidade received in 2011 a certificate of commendation in London for his contribution in the photo exhibition “Migration, Stories of a Journey”. The goal was promoting emerging photographers of all nationalities based in the EU whose work explores the lives and development of Migrants in Europe.  Some exhibitions: "La Mia Italia" in Hamburg; "Mozambikas: žmonės ir portretai" in Vilnius; "Mozambico la gente and i passaggi" in Turin; "Mozambique is Maningue Nice" in Budapest; "Home: my place in the World" in London; "Die Welt auf portugiesisch" in Berlin.

Miquidade speaks 6 languages and lives in Berlin. He works with the Red Cross, specifically in the German national policy for refugees and social integration. 

Raed Al-Rawi (migration 3)

"My story started when I came to the US in the summer of 1980 to visit an old Iraqi friend from childhood who lived in Lenior, NC. A week before my departures to Baghdad the war between Iran and Iraq broke out and travel to Iraq was closed. Days and months passed with fear of going back. A year later I decided to stay instead of going back to be drafted in a mandatory enrollment for the Iraqi army and fight in a war with Iran." In the 1970’s Al-Rawi worked as a political cartoonist for magazines and newspapers in Baghdad, Iraq. He received his BS degree in Education and Psychology in Baghdad-Iraq. In 1980 he immigrated to the US and worked as graphic designer. Al-Rawi was an Affiliate Artist at the McColl Center of Art & Innovation in 2002. In 2006 he had a residency in Skopje, Macedonia. His work has been represented locally by The Center of the Earth Gallery, (NODA) Charlotte, exhibited at the Art Council of Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Concord, Graham, Henderson, Wilmington, and is represented by Gallery C in Raleigh, N.C. Nationally, he has exhibited at the Art Council of Greenwood, SC, New Vision Gallery Marsh eld, WI, Cork Gallery at Avery Fisher Hall Lincoln, New York, NY, Ward-Nasse Gallery, New York, NY, and Atlanta, GA. Internationally Al-Rawi joined group exhibits in London, England, Iraq and Amman, Jordan. Today he teaches painting and illustration in colleges and other institutions in Charlotte.

Susanne Roewer (migration 2-3)

Roewer was finishing the undergraduate studies in material sciences (Non-metallic-Inorganic Materials) at Freiberg Technical University before starting her artistic career. She graduated from Berlin University of the Arts in 1999 with a Meisterschueler-degree in sculpture. For several years, she has run a studio in Berlin and the famous G7 Berlin network gallery before relocating to Switzerland, to pursue investigations in different materials supported by several art programs and collectors. Her artwork has been shown in different national and international galleries, museums and artassociations. She completed four art-within-architecture projects. Residencies and grants took her to Tasmania, California, Florida, Indiana and Scotland.  Roewer lives now in Berlin and is represented by Gallery Kornfeld, Berlin.

Chuck Sullivan (migration 1-2)

Sullivan was born in NYC and graduated from Belmont Abbey College, NC. After graduating from college, he spent a year as a VISTA volunteer, working with migrant laborers in Florida and West Virginia. He completed his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina/Greensboro. In 1980, A Catechism of Hearts won South Carolina's Best Poetry Book of the year, and Longing for the Harmonies, received North Carolina Poetry Council’s best book award for 1992. In 1989, PBS filmed and broadcast a documentary about him, also titled Longing for the Harmonies. His poetry has appeared in Esquire, Rolling Stone, Texas Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, Carolina Quarterly, International Poetry Review, and numerous other publications.  In 2004 Chuck was awarded the Mary Frances Hobson Award in recognition of his achievements in literature and in 2005 was honored with the Sam Regan Award for lifetime achievement in arts and letters. A gifted educator, Sullivan was the NEA Poet-in-Residence at Butler University in Indiana, and is currently Poet-in- Residence in North and South Carolina. Every summer since 1979, Chuck teaches poetry and philosophy at North Carolina Governor’s School East, where he is chairman of the English Department. 

Alyce Christina Vallejo (migration 3)

Vallejo began her training at Charlotte Ballet and The Charlotte School of Ballet. She studied at Florida State University where she worked with and performing in original works by Alex Ketley, Rick McCullough, Alonzo King and many more. Vallejo danced with Suzanne Farrell at the Kennedy Center and with Ballet Hispanico in NYC. Graduating Cum Laude in 2006 she moved to San Francisco to dance with the SF Conservatory of Dance, Performance Company. Upon moving back to Charlotte in 2007, she performed with Martha Connerton/Kinetic Works for 8 years and is a regular guest artist with the Charlotte Youth Ballet. She teaches ballet and modern dance for Charlotte Ballet Academy and Northwest School of the Arts. Vallejo joined Moving Poets as a company artist in 2013 and is part of the artistic leadership since 2015.

Dellair Youssef (migration 1-3)

Youssef is a Syrian filmmaker and writer. He was born in Syria and is currently residing in Berlin. He published a book in Beirut in 2014, which is called Stories from This Time which talks about his life, travels and reflections on the Syrian revolution. He has been working as an independent journalist for numerous newspapers and magazines since 2009. Dellair produced four movies during his film career: Tow Houses and a Story in 2010, Play in 2012, Princes of bees in 2013, Exile in 2014 and finally Damascene Features in 2015. His films have been on view at several international film festivals and screenings. Beside his professional work, he has volunteered in a few of NGOs in Syria and Lebanon since 2007.

MMR -  Jan Romberg, Eric Wilcox (migration 2)

MMR is a pantomime duo founded in Warsaw, residing currently in Berlin. Jan Romberg is from Berlin, Eric Wilcox is from San Francisco, together they make body-oriented wordless theater, working with vision to encounter a shared humanity that got overlooked in the frenzy.  They believe in power of human expression to transcend perceived differences. They use mime and physical theater techniques to change time and space, searching for the essence of situations, characters and moments.

 MMR will be performing "Imagine Me" for the project. It is their exploration into the construction of 'the other' and the natural fluidity of attitudes, personality, gender and identity.  

Clayton Venhuizen (USA) (migration 3)

 

 more bios and photos to come