Ties That Bind

Ties That Bind explores how, in contemporary art, the image becomes a means of examining the ties we forge with each other, with our environments, and with the institutions that frame our perception. Each of the five participating artists approaches photography and the moving image from a different context, yet their works share a concern with the limits of the visible—what is hidden or marginalized—and how these layers can be reactivated through artistic gesture. 

Belarusian photographer Ihar Hancharuk returns to his homeland to explore, through a series of banal snapshots, the atmosphere of paranoia and distrust permeating Belarusian society. The question 'What if I am a spy?', becomes a metaphor for the experience of a person deemed suspicious simply because they look at things differently. 

German-Egyptian-Afghan artist Donja Nasseri, in her two projects Mummy Eye and Wow! A Real Treasure, works with objects from colonial collections, digitally scanning, enlarging, and reshaping them into original installations. In doing so, she disrupts the boundary between the authentic and the reproduced, showing how the archive can be understood as a living organism capable of reinterpreting stories. 

With his series Off The Map, Sasha Chaika challenges the language and social structures that shape our perception. Her images create a parallel world in which the fixed map of norms and roles dissolves, opening space to experience relationships grounded in embodiment and affect rather than naming. 

In the multimedia work Tales They Don’t Tell You, Dev Dhunsi weaves together queer mythologies and the personal experience of losing a friend. Video and woven textiles evoke cyclical time, the flow of rivers, and shared memory, where myth and reality intertwine. 

Finnish-Hong Kong artist Sheung Yiu, in his video essay Between Two Trees, There Are Many Worlds, observes Helsinki’s forests through hyperspectral imaging. He probes the limits of technological vision and reminds us that alongside human optics, other sensory worlds exist — such as the chemical communication of beetles and trees, and forms of biology that escape satellite data. 

All the exhibited works share a desire to look beyond official narratives — whether of state control, institutional archives, linguistic norms, myths, or technological models.

Co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union, FUTURES is a platform to increase the capacity, mobility and visibility of it's selected artists and to bridge the gap between emerging and established artists.