How to move politically? Do we move? Towards who or what?

Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s reflection that “politics arises in what lies between men and is established as relationships” (Arendt & Kohn, 2007, p. 95), Choreopolitics of Joy approaches the political not as something already given within the individual, but as something that comes into being through the encounter with the other and through collective action. Politics are never singular, never static.Dance and performance make these dynamics tangible. They show how bodies can gather, resist, and create new forms of relation.

Choreographer and theorist André Lepecki offers a framework for understanding this through the concept of choreopolitics, moments in which regulated, disciplined movements (choreopolicing) are disrupted. These disruptions are not only refusals of control but openings for alternative ways of being and moving together. Seen through this lens, dance becomes more than artistic expression; it is a space to rehearse freedom and to imagine other futures, however temporary or fragile.

In this exhibition, joy is approached as an essential part of these processes. Joy is not treated as a retreat from political struggle, but as a collective energy that sustains it. In shared dances, in rhythm, in the act of moving together, can open possibilities to move away from oppressive normativity and ultra structure modes of living and being in and with the body (personal and social).

Artists:

André Lepecki, Antonio Monroy, Iris Omari Ansong, MITABA-Trio, Neo Matloga, Rabbya Naseer, Rawan Almukhtar, Tania Libertad Ávila, Tonny Africa, William Matlala, Yi-um Collective

Curator: Frida Robles Ponce

CVs //

Curated by

Frida Robles is an artist, writer and curator whose work moves between memory, place and imagination, intertwining personal narratives and collective histories. Her practice spans performance, curating, and editorial work, with projects developed in public space and at institutions such as brut Wien, WUK, mumok, La Casa Encendida, and Drawing Lab. She is part of the PEEK project Commemorating a Revolution yet to come. She teaches at the University of Vienna's Institute for Theatre, Film and Media Studies.

Participating artists:

André Lepecki is a scholar, curator and writer working across critical dance studies, performance theory, contemporary dance and visual arts. His curatorial projects include IN TRANSIT at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, MOVE at Hayward Gallery, programs at MoMA Warsaw, and the Sydney Biennale. He is the author of Exhausting Dance and Singularities and editor of several volumes on dance and performance. His work examines choreography, politics, embodiment and performance.

Antonio Monroy is a multidisciplinary artist and boxer based between Mexico and Barcelona. His practice seeks to subvert hegemonic Western notions of land and territory. Through video art, installation, performance, and writing, Monroy creates spaces of friction that challenge the conventional boundaries of contemporary art. His work has been presented across Europe and the Americas. His notable residencies include Arts Santa Mónica, the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and Flora Ars+Natura.

Bassano Bonelli Bassano is a sound artist whose work is rooted in sound ecologies and positionality through listening. Approaching listening as a multisensory practice, they create immersive installations, sound stories that blend poetry, digital, mineral and organic textures— inviting embodied engagement.

Iris Omari Ansong is a dancer, performer and dance teacher from Vienna. Her work reflects diasporic experiences, tracing visions of the future, desires, and stories from a Black, queer perspective. Influenced by dance forms and sounds of the African diaspora, Omari Ansong investigates contemporary performance as a space of imagination, resistance, and hybridity.

Lucas Jørgensen is an experimental sound artist born in Denmark and currently based in Vienna. His sound works typically employ obscure and enigmatic samples, morphed into unrecognizable new forms, resulting in atmospheric soundscapes evocative of those oneiric spaces existing only hidden in the deepest corners of our minds.

Lutaaya Tonny, artistically known as Tonny Africa, is a Ugandan dance artist, choreographer, teacher, activist and performer based in Vienna, Austria, whose interdisciplinary practice encompasses dance, theatre, and audio-visual installation. A dance scholar of the Dance Web Program at ImPulsTanz, Tonny uses dance and theatre as a community intervention and tool for change. Tonny has extensive performance arts training, actively contributing to numerous artistic projects alongside renowned cultural institutions nationally and internationally.

Instagram: @tonny_africa

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tonnyafrica

Mihret Kebede is a multidisciplinary artist, poet, and cultural organizer. She collaborates with poets, artists, musicians, and choreographers across cultures. Her works have been featured in international exhibitions and publications. Mihret is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

MITABA-Trio is a multilingual encounter of poetry, sound, and improvisation —

listening through trembling silence, expanding resonance and vibrations pulsating

between intimacy and intensity. The collaborative project between poet Mihret Kebede and sound artists Bassano Bonelli Bassano and Tahereh Nourani combines

experimental sound art and free improvisation with poetry and language, exploring the points of contact between slowness and intensity, between digital and organic, between text, vibration and rhythm.

Neo Matloga is a visual artist working between Mamaila, Johannesburg and Amsterdam. Known for his distinctive large-scale figurative compositions in collage, charcoal and ink, Matloga explores the emotional and political textures of everyday life through a visual language shaped by movement, transition and layered experience. Matloga has held solo exhibitions at institutions such as Marta Herford, Hermitage Amsterdam, S.M.A.K Ghent and Fries Museum and has been featured in exhibitions at Chazen Museum of Art, Zeitz MOCAA, Kunstmuseum Basel, Stedelijk Museum among others.

Rabbya Naseer is an interdisciplinary artist engaged in making, writing, curating and

teaching of art. She has been teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in Pakistan, Ethiopia and Austria. She is the recipient of Brooks Fellowship (Tate) 2017, Apexart Unsolicited-Proposal-Program (curation, New York) 2017 and Belvedere Art Award 2024 (Vienna). Naseer’s practice is broadly concerned with exploring the parallels between art and everyday-life and highlighting their similarities in; production, representation, reception and interpretation.

Rawan Almukhtar is an Iraqi artist based in Vienna, Austria. Working across painting, drawing, and printmaking. His practice explores how political violence, movement, and transition reshape bodies, landscapes, and systems of representation. His work engages with migration, witnessing, collective memory, and the politics of visibility. Almukhtar completed his Diploma Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. He received the Kunsthalle Wien Preis in 2024, and has twice been nominated for the Belvedere Art Award.

Semi Lim is a contemporary dancer and artist currently based in Vienna. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Contemporary Dance and Dance Education from Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz, Austria. During the 2024/25 season, she performed with Skånes Dansteater and has collaborated with internationally recognised choreographers including Chris Haring, Felix Landerer, Maciej Kuźmiński, Victor Rottier, and Roni Chadash. Her choreographic works include Two(to) Face, Paragon, and Environment.

Seung-Yeon Jung is a South Korean artist working in painting, installation and performance. She has lived and worked in Vienna since 2019, completing her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in 2025. Her practice emerges from a lifelong engagement with questions of belonging and identity in a world that, despite its constant state of flux, often remains relentlessly unyielding. In her work, traditional Korean art forms meet contemporary aesthetic concerns, transforming one another and merging into a distinctly original ecology of artistic expression.

So Young Park is a Vienna-based artist working across live performance and performative installation. Her practice explores the in-between state of living and dying, approaching life and death as interwoven conditions of existence. Through her concept of Warm-Death, she engages with the fragility of existence and the ephemerality embedded in everyday life. She was awarded the Birgit Jürgenssen Prize (2026) and nominated for the Ö1 Talentestipendium für Bildende Kunst (2025) by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Sunggu Hong is a Vienna-based artist working in visual and performing arts. With his main concept “Relation/Relationship”, his work is based on research about alienation and hatred, questioning how we live together. He worked with Lens Kühleitner, Leonie Bramberger, Rebecca Lynn Sprague and, as a part of Yi-um Collective, with So Young Park and June Hwajung. His new work, Raised by the Chronic; Beyond, the Moth, will premiere at brut Wien in November 2026.

Tania Libertad Ávila is a performance artist, arts mediator and dancer based in Barcelona, Spain. Her practice brings together gestures and memories in relation to structural violence, resistance, and possible imaginaries. She holds a degree in Performing Arts: Dance from Paris 8 University. She was part of the Independent Studies Programme (PEI) at the Barcelona MACBA. She is currently an artist in residence at Sinner and will soon undertake a residency at Casa Belgrado.

Tahereh Nourani is a Vienna-based composer and sound artist focusing on electro- acoustic and experimental music. In her work, she explores the potential of slowness and silence as well as the connection between sound, text and video.

Yi-um Collective. The Korean word “Yi-um” means “to connect”. „YI-UM Collective - Verein für interdisziplinäre performative Kunst“, based in Vienna, works across various artistic fields. By linking what has been alienated or excluded, Yi-um Collective contributes to dismantling existing boundaries and creating spaces for understanding and diverse forms of dialogue. Recent activities include: Unconveyed Convulsions (2026), Contradictory Undiscipline_ing (2026), Blinking Echoes (2025), Sunset Virus (2025), Unperceivable Senses (2025) and others. Instagram: @_yi_um