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About the artists: 

Swiss artists Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs (both born in 1979) have been working together as a duo since they first met at Zurich University of the Arts in 2003. Their diverse projects are evolving around photography, also involving sculpture, installation, film and book publishing. Their work has been shown internationally in many galleries and cultural institutions, among them solo shows at MoMA PS1 NYC, Kunsthalle Mainz, Foam Amsterdam, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Kunsthaus Aarau, CAC Cincinnati, Swiss Institute NY, LeBal Paris and KINDL Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin.

"For Taiyo & Nico, photography is more about asking questions than finding answers. Their extensive journeys are motivated by socio-political and environmental interests, as they confront preconceptions, mythologies, and the impossibility of conveying physical and emotional experiences using conventional documentary methodologies. Expanding the trope of the photographic road trip, they cultivate experimental strategies to interpret the places they visit and construct narratives. The duo’s explorations focus on capturing regions in a state of transition, resulting in unique photographic cartographies grounded by the medium’s analogue traditions " - Bonnie Rubenstein

Web: http://tonk.ch/ | Instagram: @taiyoonoratonicokrebs | Email: mail@tonk.ch

Swiss artists Taiyo Onorato (left) and Nico Krebs (right)

About the Residency Exchange program

Initiated in 2016, the artists-in-labs KAUST-Swiss Residency Exchange facilitates sustainable and long-term collaborations between artists and scientists as well as scientific and cultural institutions in Switzerland and Saudi Arabia.

The residencies at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) provide artists with the opportunity to engage with scientists and to explore a range of scientific topics, methods, and technologies as well as the site of the laboratory for three-months-periods. This remarkable institutional and cultural setting contributes to the sciences and the arts as well.

Through the transcultural and transdisciplinary dialogue and by juxtaposing concepts and procedures of different countries and knowledge cultures, the residencies offer significant room to reflect on ideas and of the other, the foreign or the unfamiliar.

In 2020, the group exhibition “Propositions for a Poetic Ecosystem” presented works stemming from the residencies, contributed by the artists Zahrah Al Ghamdi, Marie Griesmar, Muhannad Shono, Sandra Kühne, Nasser Al Salem, and Nadya Suvorova. The exhibition was part of the 7^th edition of 21.39 Jeddah Art.

The artists-in-labs KAUST-Swiss Residency Exchange is curated by the artists-in-labs program, Zurich University of the Arts, and supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia and KAUST.