We are very pleased to announce that Mika Sperling and Daniel Mebarek are the selected artists for the 2022 ‚Passage‘ Artist-in-Residence programme. We thank all applicants for their entries and the jury who reviewed the submissions over the last few weeks.

Mika Sperling is a photo-based artist currently living and working in Hamburg, Germany. She was born as the youngest of eight children in Norilsk, a mining city in Northern Siberia where her family lived for 20 years. Her family migrated to Germany in her first year of life. She studied photography and book design at the Hochschule Darmstadt and FH Bielefeld and went to the San Francisco Art Institute to pursue her MFA in 2018.

Her practice is based in photography and writing and engages questions drawn from her own childhood. Her own voice often accompanies her images. Titles play a keyrole as they can carry additional information about the story. Her work explores her own family history and can challenge relationships and taboos in order to face inner fears and overcome trauma. In her recently published book ‚Mother Tongue‘, Mika Sperling examines how origins and culture influence interpersonal relationships based on her personal family history.

www.mikasperling.de
Instagram: mika_sperling

Daniel Mebarek is a Bolivian artist and writer based in Paris, France. He holds an MA. in Photography from the Université de Paris 8 (FRA), an MSc. in Media Studies from the London School of Economics (UK) and a BA. in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris (FRA).

Drawing from his academic background in social sciences, his artistic practice examines the relationship between personal and collective memory as well as the function of archives in the writing of history. His work has been exhibited in the United States, France and the United Kingdom. Recent recognitions include the 2021 PHmuseum Photography Grant (3rd Prize), Photolucida’s 2021 Michael Reichmann Project Grant and the 2-12 Residence Award of the Cité internationale des arts in Paris. His writing has appeared in Magnum Photos and American Suburb X.

Instagram: daniel.mebarek

Published: 27th April 2022