Feminist Futures Gallery
As part of this year’s International Women’s*Theatre Festival, under the motto “Performing Ecofeminism,” we hope to foster an artistic exchange that transcends generations and cultures. Together with seven visual artists, we have developed an exhibition that explores the history of the site and traces the traces of the former shipping site. With painting, photography, installation, textile and video art, a multi-voiced dialogue emerges about the relationship between man, nature and the environment – connected with personal and collective stories.
We ask together:
– How can the connection between ecology and feminism be made visible artistically?
– What perspectives open up when we rethink our relationships with nature, body and space?
– How can solidarity-based and sustainable structures emerge beyond exploitation, sexism and discrimination?
– What contribution can art, culture and theatre make to strengthen care work, resilience and balance in a fragile world?
curated by Anna D‘Errico
artists:
Anna D’Errico
Baiba Prūse
Kinga Tóth
Maria Kobzeva
OpenSorceress Collective
Baiba Prūse is an interdisciplinary researcher from Latvia with a focus on local ecological knowledge and citizen science. She strongly supports cross-disciplinary collaboration and joint work with artists. Her recent work includes a book chapter titled “Connecting People and the Ocean Through Street Art and Citizen Science”. She is eager to learn more about how to move from research recommendations to practical implementation. In October 2024, Baiba joined the University College Cork team in Ireland, where she explored citizen engagement in Mission Ocean activities. Together with the COSEA App team, she puts ocean literacy into practice via #FindWhereFound.
Credits
#FindWhereFound is developed by a team from University College Cork working on EU projects BlueMissionAA and TIDAL ArtS, in collaboration with colleagues from Portugal and Austria.
Website/IG
#FindWhereFound profile: https://www.spotteron.com/cosea/users/104733/spots
Seaweed poetry
Baiba Prūse
Inspired by the first Irish female botanist, Ellen Hutchins (1785–1815), this art-based herbarium showcases specimens of seaweeds from coastal areas around Ireland. This initiative aims to inspire the viewer’s curiosity and offers a hands-on example of ocean literacy. The name #FindWhereFound refers to the possibility of locating the exact site and habitat where each seaweed specimen was collected, accessible via a QR code linking to a digital map. This map is part of the “COSEA” citizen science open app platform for the collaboration of marine and coastal community projects (www.cosea.app), running on the SPOTTERON Citizen Science App Platform (www.spotteron.net).
Maria Kobzeva was born in St. Petersburg and studied at the Vaganova Ballet Academy. Upon graduation in 2014, she joined SPBT Theater touring worldwide with a broad classical repertoire. To expand her movement knowledge, she studied contemporary dance at HFMDK Frankfurt, where she worked with various choreographers and co-created interdisciplinary projects. Maria’s choreographic practice includes solo, duo, and group pieces, as well as theater productions, film works, and interdisciplinary projects. She received 3 Audience Awards and currently collaborates, creates, and teaches in various contexts as a freelance artist in the Rhein-Main Area.
#DyingSwan | Dancing the environment’s reality away from fantasy
Maria Kobzeva
#DyingSwan is an artistic exploration of the relationship between nature, the human body, and the manmade condition of our planet. Through a series of 9 short posts, the project addresses ecological topics such as fast fashion, plastic waste, ghost gear, pollution and overconsumption. Dance, visual art, and movement are used to draw attention to the fragility of our environment. The idea was initiated in collaboration with dance artist Juan Urbina and produced together with visual artist Clive Tanner and dance artist Jorge Bascuñan.
Anna D’Errico is a performer, published author, curator, sensory expert, and neuroscientist. She studied dance-theater and dance alongside neurobiology. On the scientific side, she was formerly a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, specializing in brain physiology and olfaction. On the artistic side, she works with dance, theater anthropology and physical theater. Since 2017, she has collaborated with Protagon International Performing Arts on artistic and cultural projects and joined the antagon theaterAKTion ensemble in 2022. In between, she explores the sense of smell being particularly interested in the use of odors and odor perception in connection with movement and performance space.
Website
Tracce – Traces – When the scent is lost
Anna D’Errico
Traces investigates the impact of climate change and its effects on insects and flowers. Combining photography, poetry, butoh dance and surrealism, the installation uses the impermanence of scent as a symbol of the fragility of flowers – and, by extension, of the world – exploring ecological vulnerability from an eco-feminist perspective. It re-creates natural scents and combines them with visual elements to stimulate reflection and raise awareness of human impact.
Kinga Toth (b. 1983, Hungary) is a linguist, visual sound poet, illustrator, and cultural manager. She writes in German, Hungarian, and English, presenting her texts through installations and performances. She is also the founder of organizations promoting gender equality and the representation of women in the Hungarian literary scene. In both her research and artistic work, she explores the creative practices of nuns. For her intermedia and international work, she received the Hugo Ball Advancement Award and the Bernard Heidsieck Prix in 2020. In 2023, she premiered the intermedia theater piece Electric Jungle in collaboration with composer and musician Silvia Rosani. Supported by a DAAD fellowship in Berlin, she released a lyrical music album accompanied by an object poetry installation in 2024. Toth is shortlisted for the Wortmeldungen Literature Prize and the Lajos Kassák Prize. Her new ecofeminist book MARIAMACHINA will be published in 2026.
Mouthflowers in Foil Bed – Poetry, Video and Sound
Kinga Tóth
In the foil bed, nature appears eternal and evolving, indestructible, familiar and strange.
Old rules, laws and customs no longer apply – they must be redefined and relearned.
What will reconnect nature and humans? How will lost creatures, the hybrids, understand one another after the ecological and economic collapse? And how will animate and inanimate worlds now interact? Inspired by nun art and its methods of repairing and restoring, the work uses recycled materials and seeds from intimate environments. Like dioramas*, these ‘living gardens’ contain remnants that create new surroundings for one another. Objects, texts, sounds, people, and their waste come together in this tent of trash – a shared foil bed where closeness becomes possible. Here, it is possible to meditate among the rubbish and to form a relationship with it.
*A diorama is a small three-dimensional scene that represents a specific environment or moment in miniature.
OpenSorceress is an anonymous collective of three independent female artists who have founded the project to copy/write and spread banned words and censored themes to keep them alive. Open Sorceress intends to use creativity as a remedy against anything that harms the planet and its inhabitants. The collective aims to raise awareness of the current global crisis of freedom and democracy, and to promote equality and sustainable policies.
Banned Words
OpenSorceress Collective
Freedom of speech is freedom of thought and expression.
The OpenSorceress collective has gathered words that are gradually being banned by the new US-American administration – so that a trace of them remains, despite oppressive and violent forces. Words shape how we see and understand the world. They make the invisible visible. It is no coincidence that most of these banned words relate to feminism, gender equality, ecology, and the climate crisis. OpenSorceress will copy and write them forever. As part of this project, we designed and printed shirts that carry these banned words into public space. May these words be heard and spoken aloud – as a song, as a poem, as a reminder: We are the reality we create. And no one can ever undo our existence and presence.