Maia Asshaq (Shikwana) is an Assyrian-Iraqi-American writer and editor based in Los Angeles. She thinks about time just as much as everyone else and thinks about family slightly more than some people. Her memory is terrible, so it’s hard to say where her writing has appeared and where she has read. In 2023 she was able to visit her family home for the first time in over thirty years.
Yana Borodina (b. 1996 ) is a creative soul who transformed her calling into a way to unite and inspire people through yoga. Born in Mykolaiv, she discovered her true life purpose after moving to Kyiv for studies at a theatrical university. During her time at the theatrical university, she encountered yoga, which captivated her soul and opened new horizons. Her passion for art merged with a deep fascination for yoga, and this union guided her to create her own movement Scorpyoga. Over the course of six years of teaching yoga, Yana has not only gifted her students with physical strength and flexibility but also provided them with a means to deeply connect with their own selves. Her classes have become a sanctuary for those seeking harmony between movement and mind. Right from the beginning, Yana believed in the power of community, and her community has grown into a dynamic and inclusive group of like-minded individuals. She skillfully combines yoga with creativity, creating a space for creation, self-expression, and personal growth for each participant.
Sanja Grozdanić is a writer living in Berlin. Her work explores the slippages between public and private grief, anxiety, and imagination. Currently, she is in residence at La Becque, Switzerland.
Jeroen Schoorl is a Dutch ophthalmologist who specializes in cataract surgery. Between 1977 and 1979 he lived in Rada, Yemen to oversee the founding of a health clinic, but had visited Yemen and most of the Middle East before beginning in 1969, as well as South America. When living of traveling abroad he kept journals on a daily basis, to document time, medication intake, names, addresses and phone numbers of new friends, friends of friends, embassies and consulates for visa applications, but also day to day life. Together with his daughter he has selected several pages from various journals as well as photographs for the second edition of August 30.
Nour Shantout is an artist and researcher. She was born in Damascus, and she is based in Vienna since 2015. She got her diploma of fine arts at the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien (Textual Sculpture, Prof. Heimo Zobernig) in 2020, she is currently pursuing her doctorate studies of Philosophy at the same Academy and she is a visiting a lecturer at IZK the Institute for Contemporary Art, Architecture Faculty of the Graz University of Technology, and at the institute for Transcultural Studies, Angewandte. She showed her work in Vienna and internationally; in 2022 she had her solo exhibition ‘Searching for the New Dress’ at Minuseins Offspace (Vienna) and it traveled to Stroboskop Art Space (Warsaw). Her articles have appeared in JEEM, ALjumhuriya and elsewhere. She works around subjugated heritage, counter-memory, counter-history, labour and alienation, from a post-colonial feminist perspective.
Ruby T’s work is an ongoing experiment in translating fantasy to reality, and she is fueled by anger, desire, and magic. Rooted in drawing, her practice has offshoots in painting, performance, comics, fibers, and video. Exhibition and performance venues include Western Exhibitions, Roots & Culture, Iceberg Projects, and Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago; Hales Gallery in New York; and Bass & Reiner in San Francisco. She was a long-time member of Chicago organizing collective Make Yourself Useful, and her band Lezurrexion performed in over 50 crusty basements, clubs, and secret outdoor spaces between 2011 and 2015. She now lives and works on Nauset and Wampanoag land, also known as Provincetown, Mass.
CLOSE DISTANCE 