Ivars Gravlejs (LV)
Ivars Gravlejs, (Latvia, b. 1979) is an artist who has been taking photographs since childhood. Often Gravlejs is described as an “enfant terrible”. He plays with language, with combinations of words and images, and mystifies the spectator with a certain degree of infantility. The art of provocation is typical of Grāvlejs who, as it happens, can pretend nothing special is at stake. The artist holds a Master’s degree from FAMU in Prague and is currently a PhD student and teacher of “speculative spiritual photography” in Czech Republic. His work has been displayed across Europe, with solo exhibitions including: Prague-based work such as ‘A glass of champagne’ in 2015, ‘THERE WILL BE DICKS!’ in 2014, and was featured in the 4th Biennale in 2011; ‘Who’s Next’ in Moscow in 2013; and his ‘Early Works’ shown in Bratislava in 2010.
Poulomi Basu (IN)
Poulomi Basu (India, b.1983) is an Indian transmedia artist, photographer and activist. Poulomi’s work has become widely known for advocating for the rights of women.
Published in 2020, her photobook Centralia was Shortlisted for the 2020 Rencontres d’Arles Discovery Award. For this work, Poulomi was also awarded a
National Geographic Explorer 2020 award. She created Blood Speaks to utilise the power of photography and visual storytelling/activism to result in tangible social change and amplify the voices of women from the majority world.
In 2018 she collaborated with Action Aid on the campaign #MyBodyIsMine and with WaterAid in 2014 for To Be A Girl, raising £2 million and providing 130,000 girls with reusable sanitary kits and built toilets. In December 2015, she created The Rape in India Project, a crowd sourced platform to share photos of sites of rapes to protest against the shocking frequency of sexual assault in India.
Her work has been internationally exhibited and she won the Magnum Emergency Fund in 2016 and was a Magnum Foundation Human Rights Fellow in 2012. In 2017 the artist was shortlisted for the Tim Hetherington Visionary Award and the Catchlight Fellowship in 2017 with Blood Speaks and selected for the Sundance New Frontiers Lab with that same project. She has also been shortlisted for the MACK First Book Award for Centralia, and for the FOAM Paul Huf Award amongst others.
She is the Director of Just Another Photo Festival, a travelling guerrilla visual media festival that democratizes photography by taking it to the people and forging new audiences. Her festival was listed by BJP as 2015’s most Cool and Noteworthy and in 2016 in JM Colberg’s Conscientious Photography Magazine as an alternate voice of the ‘audience’.
The artist is also a visiting lecturer for the Visible Justice & Collaborative Unit at the London College of Communication and has also undertaken the ‘Reporting in Crisis Zones’ hostile management training at Columbia School of Journalism, kindly supported with a bursary from the Rory Peck Trust.
