Originally from Dublin and based in Belfast since 1995, Sinéad graduated from the University of Ulster in 1999 and received a fellowship from AHRB to take a Masters programme at Dartington College of Arts from 2003-04 where she graduated with distinction. She studied sculpture in Ulster, textiles in Dublin and visual performance and time-based practices in England. Her work has been presented in Asia, Canada, Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East, North and South America and supported by Arts Council Northern Ireland, Socrates Erasmus, the Arts & Humanities Research Council and the British Council.

The critical and artistic core of Sinéad’s solo work explores identity through immediate and mediated encounters with territory and the territorial. Recent performances have been presented at the National Review of Live Art, Glasgow (2010), Art No.11 experimental residency Japan (2010), ArTrend performance art festival Taiwan (2009), Gt Gallery project space Belfast (2009), Shelter 209, Israel (2009), My Land performance art festival, Croatia (2009), Glassbox exhibition space, University of Ulster (2009). Sinéad continues to be part of PAVES, initiated by Anne Bean and crossing borders between London, Belfast, Zagreb, Tel Aviv and Erbil since 2009.

Poshya Kakil is one of the most progressive young female performance artists currently working in Kurdistan-Iraq. Poshya graduated from the College of Fine Arts in Erbil in 2009 and her art deals directly with her identity as a Kurdish woman living in Iraq. Her performance work is about her living reality and reflects systems of kinship, gender, religion, barriers and borders. Painting, design, words, poems and drawing all contribute to how she develops her ideas into live actions. Despite geographical, cultural and border restrictions, she continues to collaborate with artists working in performance all over the world. In Kurdistan-Iraq, she has made a series of performance actions and films such as Knitting Iron, a film made at the women’s jail in Erbil supported by the Ministry of Youth and Culture.

Poshya has recently shown time-based and transmitted performance actions as part of CHAOS at Open Space, Victoria, Canada (2010), DISTANCE at Stoke Newington International Airport, London (2010), CHAOS with Bbeyond, Belfast (2010), ArTrend festival, Taiwan (2009), My Land festival, Croatia (2009 and 2011), as part of PAVES at the National Review of Live Art, Glasgow (2010) and at Liminal Space, curated by Sonya Dyer, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff.

In 2011 Poshya presented her film Knitting Iron alongside a performance detailing the unknitted lives of young girls led by Anne Bean at the BE Festival, Birmingham. 

Sylvette Babin holds a Masters degree in Open Media from Concordia University, Montreal City, where she lives and works. She has been working in performance since 1997. Sylvette has participated in a number of artistic events in Canada and overseas, notably Live Art Göteborg (2010), Chaos, Belfast (2010), Praxis, Greece (2009), 7a*11d, Toronto (2008), InfrAction 07 and Préavis de Désordre Urbain, Sète & Marseille (2007), Viva!, Montreal (2006), SOS Tierra, Argentina (2006), International Congress of Performance, Chile (2005), FIX04, Belfast (2004) and Festival Interackje, Poland (2004). With a particular interest in contextual art and site-specific work, Sylvette’s performances and installations propose metaphors related to certain physical emotional states using strategies and devices that involve the body, absurd situations or visual and sound play.

Also working as a writer, editor and curator, Sylvette has published in numerous journals, catalogues and artists’ books. She has worked as the director of the magazine esse arts + opinions since 2002. In 2008 she curated the Canadian selection of InfrAction 08 in France and in 2009 she co-curated the international event Orange in Saint-Hyacinthe, Canada.

Shiro Masuyama studied architecture at Meiji University, Kawasaki, Japan where he became interested in the intersection of architecture and art and carried out a project called Tama River Project for which he placed compartments for couples to sit at regular intervals along the bank of the Tama River.

After this project, Shiro became more interested in involving people in his work; placing his works in the middle of the city and reading the context of the site using architectural techniques. He uses motifs such as money, sex, office workers mass media and cigarettes and places an emphasis on making functional, architectural works that are approachable and easy to interact with. Shiro’s work has been described as ‘interventionist’ and ‘interactive’ and aims to draw the attention of people who have no connection to the world of art. He describes his work as four-dimensional and only complete when those who view it become involved.

Over the last 10 years Shiro has participated in a diverse range of artists’ residencies worldwide and become driven by a fascination and desire to develop art works in relation to how he can survive, communicate and make art outside Japan. He applies Japanese aesthetic senses such as simplicity to his findings.

Having recently settled in Belfast, he has become increasingly exposed to Irish culture and society day by day and his practice has become that of a stranger to a new land and a foreigner far away from Japan. As a result, his work has become more performative in its responses as he attempts to understand his physical living environment.