ShowOFF 2026 Artists
Abdalsalam Alhaj is a Sudanese artist and immersive media producer whose practice explores themes of memory, power, and identity through photography, film, and virtual reality. Rooted in lived experience and archival research, his work reflects on the passage of time and shifting social contests, weaving together personal and collective memory into layered forms of expression.
Abdalsalam is the founder of Rift Digital Lab, a creative studio producing AR/VR experiences, audiobooks, podcasts, and immersive digital cultural productions that contribute to an emerging, inclusive digital transformation in Sudan and across East Africa.
Andrzej Frydrych (b. 1991 in Krosno, Poland) is a graduate of the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School in Katowice. As a photographer and visual artist, Frydrych breaks down and reconstructs experienced reality, working with fragmented narratives that disturb the expected order of events. In his humorous photographs and objects, he balances between incident and what lingers, referring to the mechanisms of collective memory. He has exhibited at BWA Krosno (2025), Turnus (2025), and CU at Sadka (2024), among others. Lives and works in Kraków.
The work of Maite Vanhellemont (b. 1990) moves at the intersection of family stories and collective history. In the project A Little Memory of The Beginning, she reflects on her Dutch-Indonesian background using archive material, photography, video, drawings, and text. In collaboration with FW:books she will present this project as a publication at the end of 2026.
In the spring of 2025, she was selected for the Fotodok Talent Embassy (NL), and in 2024, the project Zoals mij gewoon is (As is common to me) was presented as a solo exhibition during the SPOOR Art Festival (BE), in collaboration with the Plan B Arts Platform. In 2021, she self-published Our Silver Lining, which was presented at various art book fairs in Europe.
In addition to her work as a visual artist, she works as a lecturer at the University of the Arts in Utrecht (NL) and as a language volunteer for a group of women at Stichting Dynamo in Amsterdam (NL). Maite Vanhellemont holds a bachelor’s degree in photography and is currently following the part-time master’s programme Education in Arts at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (NL).
Sonia Góral (b. 1999) is a visual artist and graduate of the Jan Matejko Academy of Arts in Kraków. She explores the dialogue between photography and painting, using archival family photographs to investigate memory, identity, and cultural narratives. Her work addresses family, feminist reinterpretations of motherhood and sexuality, Polish identity, and human–animal relations within the Anthropocene. Selected exhibitions include Open Call OEAF—Best Diploma Works (2025), 47th Painting Biennale Bielska Jesień (2025), and OFF Bratislava (2023). In 2022, she co-founded Grupa Gruz, an art collective active in the KRAKERS and Open Eyes Art Festivals.
Monika Libera (b. 1976) is a photographer based in Szczecin, Poland. She studied photography and sociology. Her work is rooted in conceptual and socially engaged photography, exploring the body, illness, and community. She focuses on intimacy, care, and relational presence, treating photography as a space of encounter and co-participation. Working in long-term collaboration with people experiencing illness and disability, she creates images that explore vulnerability, connection, and shared experience. Her practice combines documentary sensitivity with conceptual reflection, emphasizing everyday situations, micro-gestures, and the complexity of human relationships.
Vitaliy Gerasymenko (b. 1993, Ukraine) is a cinematographer and photographer currently documenting the frontline as a member of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. With a background in film and linguistics, his work investigates the fracture of human perception under extreme pressure. His practice has evolved from traditional reportage toward a conceptual mapping of the “zero line” as both a cognitive and technological space.
Utilizing the aesthetics of the modern battlefield, Gerasymenko captures a perspective born of direct immersion—one where the landscape is stripped of its familiar surface. His work seeks to render the invisible atmosphere of the frontline, creating a haunting, visceral record of the human and machine presence amid the ongoing Russian invasion.