Introducing People Making Make
Gustav Hellberg
Artist, lecturer and founder of Make
Make 2019 and 2023
Gustav Hellberg is a new media artist who's artistic practice lies in the public sphere, where he looks for an interaction between people, artwork and the public space. Hellberg divides his life and work between Berlin and Seoul, where he is currently employed as assistant professor at College of Arts at Chung-Ang University, Seoul.
Silas Fong
Artist, lecturer and co-founder of Make
Make 2019
Silas Fong evaluates the context behind each project to develop respective approaches for conceptual and critical expression. His work often reflects his role as an audience and an artist concerning the operation of the art world. After starting his university position, Fong tries to combine his interest in artist’s book, performance, installation, text, instructions with teaching into a new series of works.
Born in 1985, Silas Fong is a contemporary artist born in Hong Kong. He furthered his studies in the Academy of Media Arts Cologne after earning his MFA and BA from Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2012 and BA from Hong Kong Baptist University in 2008 respectively. Since September 2017, Fong was invited to work as Assistant Professor in the Department of Photography, College of Arts, Chung-Ang University in Seoul.
Jeon TaeHwan 전태환
Artist and student
Make 2019
Jeon TaeHwan’s interest lies with the curiosity of the 'now', experimenting with the ideas of 'reality' and 'self'. His artistic practice often engages with images and their behaviors, trying to redirect or interrupt their nature in the context of art, culture and technology. These interests are explored through various mediums, including photography, video, performance and installations.
Jeon TaeHwan was born in 1995 and is currently a student at the Depratment of Photography at College of Arts at Chung-Ang University, South Korea.
Tobias Gutmann
Artist and student
Make 2019
Tobias Gutmann’s artistic practice aims to bring people, cultures, and environments together. He uses his own visual language to give meaning, character, and atmosphere to a variety of formats such as installations, music-videos, publications and workshops. Performing such formats both nationally and around the world, his art always hopes to affect people in a positive way, and to communicate an incentive for participation.
Tobias Gutmann was born in Wewak, Papua New Guinea in 1987 and lives in Zürich, Switzerland. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in visual communication at the Bern University of the Arts and spending some time working in Tanzania, he continued his education by studying storytelling at the renowned Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm.
Pablo Lienhard
Artist (ZHdK alumni)
Make 2019
Pablo Lienhard is a Zürich based improviser performing on saxophones, no-input mixers, guitar pedals, computers and other stuff. As an investigating artist he is interested in randomness, overflow, acceleration, interdisciplinarity, performance art, mise-en-scène, contexts, the relationship between language and music, as well as contemporary pop culture. These topics of interest become apparent in his current projects. For instance the #workoutjazz high energy trio “White Pulse”, his electro-acoustic solo project “phthoggos”, the performance „polyphonic drawings“ with Swiss artist Tobias Gutmann where ink meets sound or different other collaborations with local improvisers.
Pablo Lienhard graduated from Zurich University of the Arts in September 2019 obtaining a Master of Arts in Jazz and Music Pedagogy.
Sul Youngjoo
Artist and student
Make 2019
Sul Youngjoo has been working on photography and small crafts using silver, and recently working with iron and stainless steel on a large scale. Her artistic practice begins with a simple yet easily accessible material or structure. she looks at the changes at large that a person experiences as he or she grows up and observe their impact on society. Therefore, her works sometimes emphasizes the sympathy and interaction between people and people, people and things.
Sul Youngjoo was born in 1995 and is currently a student at the Department of Photography, College of Arts, Chung-Ang University, South Korea.
Ken Marchionno
Artist, writer, curator and professor in Photography and Imaging
Make 2019 and 2023
Ken Marchionno is an artist, writer, curator living in the Los Angeles area. He is a Professor in Photography and Imaging at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, USA.
His photography, interactive works, installations, and videos have been featured in exhibitions and festivals throughout North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. His work is presented in Dr. Betty Ann Brown’s Art and Mass Media, and Robert Hirsch’s Exploring Color Photography. He has been a stringer for the Associated Press and his photography has been featured in magazines in the US and Korea, including the contemporary art quarterly, X-TRA. He has written criticism for Art Papers and Sajin Yaesul, and his creative writing has been included in the literary journals such as Errant Bodies and Framework.
Brett Childs
Artist and student
Make 2019
My work has found its influence primarily in matters of identity and the individuality of experience. Earlier projects began looking at identity from a very personal viewpoint by exploring my relationship with my father and my relationship with my heritage after he died. Subsequent projects continued to explore the concept of identity but focused instead on attributes that constitute the human experience, namely time and memory. While these themes of identity and individuation continue to inform my work, I soon began to focus more on the relationship between individuals and the larger groups that they constitute.
Jim Ramer
Artist, curator and educator
Make 2019 and 2023
Jim Ramer is an artist, curator and educator. His work spans photography, video, sculpture, and installation. He currently serves as the Director of the MFA in Photography program at Parsons School of Design in New York City. He holds an M.F.A. from Memphis College of Art.
Marie Vic
Artist and lecturer
Make 2019
MARIEVIC [b. Paris, France] is a visual artist currently living and working in New York City. She graduated from École Spéciale d’Architecture and received an MFA from Parsons The New School for Design.
Her work considers the fetishized cultures of consumption and gives a careful look to changing conceptions of luxury and disposability. She often employs a decidedly absurdist sense of humor and always aims to develop visual idioms that explore the contemporary cultural landscape, and to exist within the liminal space of interstitial paradigms.
Amanda Johnson
Artist and student
Make 2019
Amanda Johnson is a South Bronx based artist and photographer. She obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art with concentrations in photography and painting from Earlham College, a private liberal arts school in the Midwest. Currently, Amanda is in graduate school at Parsons School of Design where she will be receiving her Masters of Fine Arts in Photography. Much of Johnson’s early work were studies of the Midwestern landscape. Her work has evolved and now focuses on Black femininity and the female body as represented in art history, the media and society. The work detaches from the sexual associations of nudity and incorporates ideas of transforming the body into a sculptural entity.
From the globe-impacting graffiti of the South Bronx where she grew up - to the renowned collections along museum mile of the Upper East Side where she attended school – and from the folkloric traditions of Cuba, Mexico and the Ukraine to the impressions and impressionism of France and England (all of which Amanda traveled to before 18) - her background is a diverse tapestry of influences that have helped shape her perspective and pursuits both artistically and professionally.
While Amanda Johnson studies and creates art, her educational background and professional choices have begun shaping her uånderstanding of the depth of art history, the breadth of the art world and the role of galleries in contemporary society, she is constantly left with a deeper desire to learn more, experience more, and contribute more.
Steven Baboun
Artist and student
Make 2019
Steven Baboun is a 23 year-old artist and photographer from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He is a graduate from American University where he received a Bachelor's degree in Film and Media Arts and Education Studies. He's currently a graduate student at Parsons School of Design in New York City working toward his MFA in Photography. Baboun creates through photography, video, and performance art. His work explores diverse social issues within the Haitian community such as queerness, race and social class, politics, religion (namely Vodou and Catholicism), and multi-cultural identities. Baboun presents to the world the complexities of Haitian society and how Haiti is an incubator for innovation, creativity, and storytelling. Haiti has always been the center of negative attention in the media– often times depicting an inauthentic and sensationalized representation of the island. Through his work, he counters this toxic narrative by showing that Haiti is a country driven by racial and sexual diversity and dynamic spirituality. He is inspired by the ever-evolving nature of the self, his country and its narratives.
Swetlana Heger-Davies
Asrtist and educator
Make 2019 and 2023
Swetlana Heger is a visual artist, professor in Fine Arts and director of the department Art & Media at ZHdK.
In her artistic work, she has an ongoing interest in the act of contextualization and dislocation. She is exploring the questions about conditions of an art production including discussion about multiple authorships and relevant possibilities of collaborations between the arts and other partners. Various international solo and group exhibitions i.e.: Musée des Beaux Arts/Nancy, Le Consortium/Dijon, Vienna Secession, Melbourne Biennale, Berlin Biennale, Centre Georges Pompidou/Paris, Arts Space/New York, Centre National de la Photographie/Paris, Moderna Museet/Stockholm, Hamburger Bahnhof/Berlin, manifesta11, Zürich, Antarctic Pavilion/57. Venice Biennale.
Her art works are represented in private and public collections and had been reviewed and published in international publications as Artforum, Flash Art, Frieze, Art Now, Spike, Monopol, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Der Spiegel, Princeton University Press, Les presses du réel, Edition Flammarion, Walther König etc.
Shane Hulbert
Academic, artist and curator
Make 2023
Shane Hulbert is a Melbourne based academic, artist and curator. He is Associate Professor of Photography in the School of Art at RMIT University, where he lectures in imaging technologies and visual culture, from undergraduate through to doctorial supervision.
His photographic work has been shown nationally and internationally, most notably at the National Gallery of Victoria and the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), both in Melbourne, Australia, and the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China. He writes on contemporary art education, and his photographic practice explores and critiques the expression of a collective national Australian identity through distinct and popular iconography that connects place, history and culture.
Pia Johnson
Photographer, visual artist, curator and educator
Make 2023
Pia Johnson is a photographer, visual artist, curator and educator, whose practice explores cultural identity, mobility and migration, with notions of performativity and hybridity. Pia has exhibited across Australia and internationally, is a regular finalist in photographic awards, and her work is collected in private and public collections including the National Gallery of Victoria. She is one of the leading portrait and performance photographers within the Arts industry. Pia is a Lecturer in the School of Art at RMIT University where she completed her PhD, and is currently the Program Manager of the Master of Photography program. She lives on Dja Dja Wurrung country in regional Victoria.
Deden Hendan Durahman
Artist, curator and educator
Make 2023
Born in Majalaya in 1974, he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Bandung Institute of Technology. After graduating from the graphic arts studio in 1997, he pursued a Diploma in the Visual Arts program at Braunschweig University of Art, Germany. At the same Institution, he completed his studies and graduated with the title of Meisterschüler. Durahman returned to Indonesia in 2006 and worked as an artist, designer, photographer, and lecturer staff at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Design at the Bandung Institute of Technology, where he founded Intermedia Studio in 2008.
Durahman's artworks are in the collections of various public institutions, such as the Tama Art Museum in Tokyo and the Cabinet des Estampes of the Art Museum in Geneva. His works have been included in several exhibitions in galleries, festivals, Biennale, and Triennale in various countries, including group and solo exhibitions. He was awarded the Silver Prize at the Polaroid Transfer Photography Competition in 2004 in Hannover, was the recipient of the Juror Candidate Award at the Tama Tokyo Print Triennale in 2005 in Japan and was selected for The Sovereign Art Asian 2020 award. He is featured in the books, "Half a century of Indonesian printmaking," "Photography in Southeast Asia: A Survey" by Zhuang Wubin, and "Identity Crisis: Reflections on Public & Private Life in Contemporary Javanese Photography" and A History of Photography in Indonesia: From the Colonial Era to the Digital Age by Brian Arnold.