Bart Was Not Here (also known as Kyaw Moe Khine) is a Burmese artist in exile based in New York. Bart’s mediums span from working with large scale canvases to sculptural installations, figurines, digital illustrations, and still expanding. Bart's artworks on or off the walls are a mix of text and image juxtaposing his experiences being born as a Burmese-Muslim into military dictatorship in Burma, and his life as an immigrant. His visuals have been described to be “technicolor fever dream”. His humour can be fully appreciated alongside a riddled punchline commentary about his past as an outsider in the home country, an outsider in the western world, but connecting with people everywhere through the love of various cultures and subcultures that have taken over the world in the 21st century.
Growing up in Burma, an authoritarian country, Bart was frustrated by a corrupted school system, a strict religion, and the inability to assimilate into the traditional Burmese culture. Access to global Pop Culture through movies, cartoons, films, novels and magazines found in Burmese bootleg markets provided him a lens to the alternative outside world. Since acquainting with graffiti at 13 years old, he started practicing under the moniker "Bart Was Not Here" after the character in “The Simpsons”, paying homage to René Magritte’s “The Treachery of Images”.
Bart graduated from Lasalle College of the Arts as a Diploma in Fine Arts major in 2018. Bart has participated in over thirty solo and group exhibitions. He was also an artist-in-residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France for 2021-2022.

More information about Bart's exhibition history, background and artistic work can be found on his website.

Pierre Bessuges’ origins lie in the South of France. He has spent half of his life abroad and worked over 30 years in development aid, international cooperation and humanitarian action.

While Pierre is now independently pursuing his humanitarian engagement and attachment to cultural and humanist values, he has become in the very recent years an emerging self-made artist. His ambition is to pursue his own artwork and to develop and advise on initiatives linking art and humanism through cooperation projects, supporting local communities and artists.

With a somewhat rocketing art production and success, he is fulfilling his aspiration to express himself and communicate his vision through his practice and exploration of contemporary art techniques. His work can be abstract or lightly suggestive at times, graphic and colourful. Spontaneously, he uses different raw materials and supports such as metal, canvas, wood and clay and transforms, alters or re-uses them, to create bespoke pieces of art in the form of paintings, objects, furniture and sculptures.

Over the past 6 years, Pierre has participated in several solo or collective art exhibitions in Switzerland, France, Corsica, Belgium, Morocco, and Iraq.

More information about Pierre Bessuges’ exhibition history, background, artistic and humanitarian work can be found on his website.

Meet PauLine Maisonneuve - a human rights officer at the United Nations, (single) mother, feminist, French, and who also happens to be a passionate photographer – and so much more! She has spent years living, working, and traveling across the globe, including to conflict zones, and is now based in New York with her little girl.

She believes wholeheartedly in the statement that "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights" (Art. 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Sadly, this powerful statement faces up to the harsh reality of the world. Pauline has witnessed it firsthand and from an early age – in her personal and professional experiences. Deeply affected and dismayed by the unfair, unequal, and too often violent experiences that human being face, at home and around the world, she finds solace in photography, where even amidst its chaos the world's beauty, softness, and quietness, become visible.

Through her photography, Pauline seeks to inspire empathy and understanding in others, bringing calmness, serenity, a delicate melancholy and a poetic pause to the brutality of the world. She captures the world as it is though, without affectation or dramatization, in all its diversity, similarity, absurdity, cruelty, beauty, and humanity, sometimes all at once. Her camera is her third eye. Through her lens, the mosaic of the world comes to life.

Although Pauline is now based in the United States battling with metastatic breast cancer, she continues documenting life, people, moments, details and feelings through her photographs. She seeks to embrace the strengths and vulnerabilities of the world, one snapshot at a time.

Claire Panetier is an emerging young artist who is enthusiastic, creative, and dynamic. She has worked for nearly 10 years in humanitarian emergencies on the African continent. Since childhood, the artistic universe has always played an important role in her life, allowing her to express her emotions and recharge. As a self-taught artist, she has developed her own painting technique guided by her intuition and emotions.

Her works are the expression of a cosmopolitan life journey strongly influenced by African culture. Black curves and lines structure an intangible, elusive, and intimate message inspired by personal experience. Their thicknesses and surfaces reflect intensity, while the colors convey emotional imprints. These colors, solar and explosive, burst with nuance and warmth. Through this geometry, one can catch glimpses of eyes and mouths, symbols of her introspection and connection to the world. Her art exudes communicative and liberating energy that invites everyone into their inner imagination.

More info about Claire here.

Jahan is an Afghan female artist who began painting as an amateur in 2000. She enrolled in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Kabul University in 2003 and received her BA in Painting/Drawing in 2007. Jahan became a member of the Centre for Contemporary Arts of Afghanistan in 2004 and co-founded the Centre for Women Artists in 2006. She has showcased her artwork in various exhibitions across Afghanistan and was part of a group of Afghan female artists who exhibited their works in Germany in 2008. In 2014, Jahan co-founded the Shamama Art Gallery, which promotes the arts as a cornerstone of community creativity and development. Jahan was a full-time art teacher at School of Leadership Afghanistan from 2016 to 2020, where her work aimed to empower young women to express themselves through art. Her artwork focuses on the social roles and limitations imposed upon women and encourages self-emancipation. To learn more about Jahan, check her website. 

Artist and videographer, French & Swiss nationalities, born in 1989 in Paris, Sarah Vozlinsky associates still image, video, sound, installation and relational process. Her approach combines social sciences, activism and visual arts, often collectively, giving importance to the societal influence of art outside of museums and creating space-times of encounter.

Her work has been exhibited and screened in France, Morocco, Chad, Benin, Laos and Cuba.

After graduating with a Master's degree in international relations from Sciences Po in Paris, specialized in sustainable development, she coordinated international non-profit teams and programs in international solidarity and human rights for more than 8 years – mainly in France, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, in Peru, Laos and North Korea.

She also teaches university courses at La Sorbonne and professional workshops on collective project engineering for social change.

Learn more about Sarah's artistic vision and works here.