UP's international residency programme Moving Identities welcomes six newly selected groups
The artists selected for the third and final year of the Moving Identities residency programme represent a diversity of disciplines and approaches in European performing arts.
In 2025-26, six performing arts groups will develop new projects in six European countries, where they will learn and share perspectives on what European identity means today.
They are all quite different in their artistic approaches and disciplines, but in their own way, they challenge stereotypes and broaden our understanding of identity in contemporary Europe.
This year's applicants and selected artists prove that European identity is not one thing – that it cannot and should not be essentialised. It is diversity that characterises us.
In selecting artists for Moving Identities, we as partner venues and external curators have sought to honour this with a broad representation of artists and disciplines. We have selected groups that we truly hope will benefit from working across borders.
Gathoni // Wanjiku (DK)
Invisible Faces – Denmark is the working title of Gathoni // Wanjiku's project in Moving Identities. It aims to explore the lived, raw experiences of African women in Denmark – specifically women who live or have lived in violent relationships, how they ended up in them, and how they are coping.
Gathoni // Wanjiku's artistic collaboration began in 2021 with an invitation from producer Julienne Doko to create an exhibition/performance work. This culminated in the collaborative performance work Blinkered, which premiered at Den Frie Exhibition Building as part of Embodied Journeys in 2023.
In Moving Identities, the two artists will spend 14 days working at UP, at Kunstplaats Vonk in Belgium, and at Nau Ivanow in Barcelona.
Gomrâh (BE)
Gomrâh is a group of Iranian artists living in Belgium – a rapper and theatre maker, a pianist and composer, and a photographer and designer. In Moving Identities, they explore with the project Mourning In the Wrong Language: What does it mean to mourn from a distance? To bear the loss in solitude? How does one mourn in a place that does not carry the collective memory of one's loss? What rituals are lost in translation? And what role can art play in creating spaces for memory where new rituals can emerge?
LIQUID LOGIC (DE)
LIQUID LOGIC is an interdisciplinary artist collective based in and around Dresden. They move between dance, sound, rituals and futuristic cuteness. They work with open bodies, clear impulses and monstrous frequencies. Inspired by eco-queer, post-activist and decolonial theory, they create in collaboration with the ‘more than human world’.
Abjectified Project (NO)
Since 2018, the artists in the Abjectified Project have performed together in various constellations in more or less planned drag art environments. What they all have in common is a solid drag performance practice and a love of repulsive aesthetics – the abject.
M0nster.L4b (ES)
The two Spanish-based artists Lu Chieregati and Feña Celedón are interested in intersecting dissident experiences with ecology, migration, decoloniality, and transsexuality. They connect choreographic studies with the artistic phenomenon of drag, transvestism, and its hybrid identities.
Third Figure (LV)
Using life-size puppets, actors and puppeteers, the newly formed collective from Latvia explores the concepts of the “shadow self” and “trickster” tendencies, which have their roots in Jung's theories, and their role in shaping our inner and outer experiences.
In the third and final year of Moving Identities, the partner venue INITIUM is on board. This means that a group from Latvia will have the opportunity to develop their practice internationally, and that two of the other groups will come to Latvia, where they will gain close knowledge of the scene in and around Riga.