Mantas Lesauskas practice as a designer and researcher often revolves around stone, memory, and nonhuman material agencies. In Lanzarote, he aims to work directly with volcanic ash, experimenting with geopolymer concretes and composites, while also engaging in sensorial ethnographic field walks to attune to the island’s geology. This process will include visiting local volcanic rock carvers, learning from traditional craft, and developing a series of objects and vessels that embody Lanzarote’s volcanic identity. Casting with local ash is, for him, a way of reactivating the island’s geology as designed matter — a contemporary “artificial stone” that parallels ancient traditions of volcanic pozzolana in Roman concrete.

Alongside the material practice, he wants to situate this research in a broader cultural and ecological context. Food, gardens, and hospitality will form part of this exploration, understood not only as human culture but as more-than-human gatherings where geology, plants, and species meet.

In this sense, he also wishes to revisit the legacy of César Manrique, whose work embodied a unique dialogue between architecture and volcanic landscapes. Finally, his research will be tied to a reflection on the Devil as a cultural figure. In Lithuanian folklore, the Devil is bound to stones and everyday life, often entangled with money and trickery. In Lanzarote, this resonates with volcanic fire and the island’s transformation under tourism and capitalist economies. Following Donna Haraway’s notion of the Capitalocene, he will explore how money and exploitation are today’s devils, and how volcanic matter might help him imagine alternatives beyond them. Through material experimentation, field research, and design-making, he hopes to contribute to the residency by opening a dialogue between geology, culture, and myth — and by making pieces that embody this entanglement.

Goda Marija Gasiūnaitė is an artist and historian whose practice explores culinary traditions, gardening, and feminine histories. Through interdisciplinary research and creative work, she traces how everyday practices of care, nourishment, and cultivation shape cultural memory and alternative narratives of history. She holds bath a BA and an MA in Cultural History and Anthropology from Vilnius University.

Goda Marija Gasiūnaitė will carry out material and anthropological research on volcanic matter. Her practice as a designer and researcher often revolves around stone, memory, and nonhuman material agencies. In Lanzarote, she aims to work directly with volcanic ash, experimenting with geopolymer concretes and composites, while also engaging in sensorial ethnographic field walks to attune to the island’s geology. This process will include visiting local volcanic rock carvers, learning from traditional craft, and developing a series of objects and vessels that embody Lanzarote’s volcanic identity. Casting with local ash is, for her, a way of reactivating the island’s geology as designed matter — a contemporary “artificial stone” that parallels ancient traditions of volcanic pozzolana in Roman concrete. Alongside the material practice, she wants to situate this research in a broader cultural and ecological context. Food, gardens, and hospitality will form part of this exploration, understood not only as human culture but as more-than-human gatherings where geology, plants, and species meet. In this sense, she also wishes to revisit the legacy of César Manrique, whose work embodied a unique dialogue between architecture and volcanic landscapes. Finally, her research will be tied to a reflection on the Devil as a cultural figure. In Lithuanian folklore, the Devil is bound to stones and everyday life, often entangled with money and trickery. In Lanzarote, this resonates with volcanic fire and the island’s transformation under tourism and capitalist economies. Following Donna Haraway’s notion of the Capitalocene, she will explore how money and exploitation are today’s devils, and how volcanic matter might help her imagine alternatives beyond them. Through material experimentation, field research, and design-making, she hopes to contribute to the residency by opening a dialogue between geology, culture, and myth — and by making pieces that embody this entanglement.

Joanna Cohn is a multidisciplinary artist working across print, painting and installation.

Jo recently won the Nasdaq Art Prize, The Landmark Art Prize, The Graduate Art Prize, Intaglio Printmakers Prize, GBS Fine Art Prize, Rosemary Simmons Lithography Award and her work was selected for the Clifford Chance Printmaking in London show, the V&A Illustration Awards, RCA Hyundai Awards for Excellence in Creativity and Sustainability and RA Summer Exhibition amongst other accolades.

She is the current recipient of the prestigious Tim and Belinda Mara Award at Hampstead School of Art 2025, and is visiting artist at Buckinghamshire New University. Her work is currently on display at The Russell Cotes Gallery, Bournemouth as a finalist for the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize 2025, and at The New Arts Exchange in Nottingham as a selected artist in the 2025 Open.

Jo graduated from The RCA in 2024, where she was awarded an MA in Print supported by The Leverhulme Trust and studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins where she graduated with Distinction in 2023, supported by The Equity Charitable Trust.

My project explores the fusion of physical and digital elements to create a multimedia experience. I will incorporate textile components alongside 3D and mixed reality technologies, drawing inspiration from Lanzarote's unique landscapes, structures, and natural features to develop a dynamic work that bridges the digital and physical worlds.

I would like to work on my series “I coloured it for you”. In this series I make drawings using oval and circular stencils and a protractor. When the outlined drawing is complete, I carefully color them in with coloured pencil. I like to see them as these children colouring pages that I make for myself. Sometimes I leave months in between drawing the lines and colouring them in. So that I can forget the drawing before I colour it in and almost forget that it was me who made the line-drawing.

Each drawing is constructed using a set of rules and steps I set for myself. I find it difficult to create something from nothing and these rules provide a structure where I can let my intuition flow. Because of the systematic and playful process, these drawings are a form of introspective order for me.

Though I’ve already created many pieces in this series over the past year, I feel like it’s just the beginning. The rules I set up for myself evolve as the series progresses, making the possibilities feel endless. Currently, the drawings feature simple shapes and symbols like stars and hearts, but what if I introduce more complex forms? Will the drawings retain their impact? Or, what if I focus more on the texture of the coloured pencils to shape the image itself? These questions, and many more, I would like to explore at the residency.

Lucas Lai is a Brooklyn-based artist whose practice explores experimental photographic material processes, informed by a deep appreciation of mono no aware — the awareness of beauty in impermanence. His work engages landscape as both subject and collaborator by using analog and site-responsive techniques to examine ephemerality, place, and time. 

During his residency at Hektor, Lucas’ project focuses on alternative photographic processes, including anthotypes and digital-negative contact printing. Drawing pigments and materials directly from the surrounding environment, he works with plants and sunlight to create images that are contingent on ecological conditions and temporal change.

Lucas is also the founder of Curio, a regenerative travel advisory that curates purposeful designed retreats for creatives around the world. Alongside his studio practice, Lucas will be in dialogue with the local community to explore models of tourism that are more sustainable and mutually beneficial, considering not only human stakeholders but also the broader ecological systems of Lanzarote.

Nina Backman’s artistic practice explores art as a shared, participatory experience that fosters connection, awareness, and collective responsibility. Her work brings people together through embodied encounters that invite reflection, listening, and action in response to pressing social and environmental challenges.

Silence Meal is a performative dining experience centered on shared silence. Participants gather around a table and share a meal without verbal communication, creating a space for deep presence, attentiveness, and non-verbal exchange. The work encourages reflection on how we relate to one another, to food, and to the environment, offering an alternative model for social interaction based on care, listening, and mutual respect.

Alongside Silence Meal, Backman presents the Gift Series, a long-term artistic and environmental initiative based on acts of giving: planting trees, sharing knowledge, and connecting people across communities. The Gift Series functions both as a social artwork and as a concrete environmental action. Tree planting becomes a symbolic and practical gesture of responsibility toward future generations, while workshops, conversations, and shared activities build networks of learning, collaboration, and ecological awareness.

Together, Silence Meal and the Gift Series create a platform for participatory engagement.These initiatives invite diverse audiences to take part in meaningful actions that bridge art, ecology, and everyday life, fostering a sense of shared ownership and agency in shaping a more sustainable and connected society.

Nina Backman is a Finnish-born, Berlin-based artist and curator whose interdisciplinary practice spans performance, installation, and socially engaged art. She is the founder of the Silence Project, which explores the intersections of silence, communication, and shared human experience. She graduated from the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) in 2000.

Backman’s practice also extends into ecological interventions, most notably her ongoing tree-planting initiative A Million Trees to Finland, which merges art, community participation, and environmental restoration. By combining contemplative social rituals with tangible acts of ecological care, her work invites audiences to slow down, listen, and engage with both one another and the natural world.

Her work is held in both public and private collections, including the Roosen Trinks Collection in Germany and the Finnish Literature Society in Helsinki. She has exhibited internationally at venues such as Nordic House in Iceland, West Bund Art Center in Shanghai, Punkt Ø Galleri F 15 in Norway, Malmö Museum in Sweden, her performative work has been shown in the venues such the Berliner Festspiele, Flagey in Brussels, Aedes Architecture Forum in Berlin, and Punkt Ø Galleri F 15 in Norway. Her environmental tree events have been featured in leading Finnish museums, including Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Amos Rex, Taidehalli, Turku Art Museum, EMMA - Espoo Museum of Modern Art and the Serlachius Museums among others.

In 2023, the Silence Project was awarded the title of Most Innovative Social Art Initiative in Europe by the European Enterprise Awards. 

Line Pillet is a filmmaker based in Brussels. Through 16 mm imagery, her work gazes with tenderness at those who live on the margins. In her films vulnerability becomes a source of beauty. Her characters often anonymous or displaced, inhabit a world that excludes them, yet they keep reaching for connection.

In 2020, she was selected by Cité des arts Internationale Paris for a writing residency where she developed the script of her short film Window. The film premiered at Regard Festival 2023 (CA) where it was selected for the official competition. Afterwards, the film had a national premiere at Film Festival Oostende. This was followed by a selection at Cut To: Gent festival where the film won the award for best cinematography.

Her latest short film Un Matin was selected for the official competition of International Short Film Festival Leuven 2024 where it premiered for the opening night. In September 2025 Un Matin was screened as part of the official competition at the Greek Drama International Short Film Festival (DISFF).

WORK

2024 / Un Matin

2023 / Window

2021 / Chorus 

Glenn Sanders (b. 1989, Belgium) is a Brussels-based artist whose practice unfolds through layered explorations of space, perception, and material presence. Educated at the Academie Jan van Eyck in Bruges and later at the School of Arts in Ghent, he holds both a Bachelor and Master in Fine Arts and recently followed a seminar on colour with Félix A. D’Haeseleer.
His work has been featured in exhibitions including Spaces, Superposed States, MANUAL, Dark ’n Stormy, Wandelgangen, A Garden Party, Blue blue blurb blue.. Projects have been shown at Komplot Brussels, L’ Édition populaire Antwerp, Fred&Ferry Gallery Antwerp, Superdeals Brussels, Katapultt Gallery Scheldewindeke, and other venues across Belgium.
He continues expanding the dialogue between artistic research, built environments, and lived experience.

Artist Statement

As a studio-based artist, I use observations from my working environment and from the broader processes of material production as points of departure. For example, the repeated rolling and unrolling of linen during manufacturing, storage, or transport becomes a gesture I reintroduce into my practice. By applying diluted paint while manipulating the linen in this way, patterns and traces appear that often escape my control. Only at a later stage—through cropping, cutting, and framing—do I re-claim the image and give it a defined form.

This interplay between control and unpredictability lies at the core of my practice. It allows me to question the relationship between process and outcome, and to explore how material behaviour can shape the final work.

What drives my art? The answer has to be the impulse to create and continually push myself to discover new ways to describe the world within me and around me.

Sylvietta is an artist Based in East London, her mixed media work spans from dynamic cityscapes to expressive portraiture, with each focus evolving along its own creative path.

My work embraces the vibrancy of collage, weaving together layered stories through recycled paper and found materials from her surroundings. This sustainable approach not only reflects her commitment to environmental responsibility but also serves as a defining signature in her art. -a collage can be an infinite work of art, you can add more pieces of paper or figures and go beyond the limit of the piece of paper again and again.

Sylvietta is also part of the #draweachoter art group, a global open community of artists that draw each other's portraits that in London and now is spread all over the world, her artworks are being sold in London and around the world.

Nicola Tremain is a self-taught artist producing expressive, intuitive work. Each piece begins without a plan, evolving organically on the panel. By spraying, smearing, or scraping paint to relinquish control, she taps into memory and imagination, allowing abstract forms to shift into landscapes, still lifes, or portraits - and sometimes back again. The history of this transformation remains partially visible, adding depth, texture, and unexpected meaning. In this process of evolution, happy accidents often align to reveal deeper symbolism, with the story or lesson behind a piece only becoming clear upon completion.

For her portraits, Nicola works from life. Free-flowing conversation during a sitting enables her to get to the heart of a person. Placing colours freely and intuitively she builds a fleeting frame that captures their essence.

Beyond the studio, Nicola is an Emmy-nominated documentary director, traveling to remote corners of the globe. These immersive experiences inform her artistic exploration of storytelling, bridging the external world with the internal dialogue of envisioning a better future.

Anne Ballon (she/her) is a writer and jeweller based in Brussels. Her texts have been published in several magazines, among others, in Rekto:Verso, Deus Ex Machina, deBuren, De Reactor and Hard//hoofd. Anne is part of the writers’ and artists’ collective Hyster-X. She is a VLOED laureate.

During the residency, Anne will work on Buiten, in de dingen, a work of poetic prose. In this text, a group of anti-mothers must reorient themselves after a cosmic event has overthrown an oppressive, totalitarian regime. How do they recover from this, and how do they learn to live together?

Jesús Vacas (Seville, 1977) is a Spanish artist and designer. He holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Seville and furthered his studies in Madrid, where his exposure to the world of fashion would decisively shape his career. He currently divides his time between Galicia and Madrid, combining his work as a menswear designer with his passion for oil painting.

His work focuses on the male figure, blending the rigor of classical training with a contemporary perspective influenced by fashion. Intimate and direct, his paintings o er a pause from the fast pace of the digital world, inviting us to rediscover the simple beauty of being human.

Frederik Schnieders, a 45-year-old Antwerp-based painter, is renowned for his evocative and dynamic approach to art. His work blends the boundaries of impressionism, realism, and surrealism, creating a vivid and expressive narrative on canvas and paper. Graduating from the esteemed Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Schnieders' passion for portraiture and figurative art was kindled through intensive figure drawing studies. This foundational experience propelled him into an in-depth exploration of oil painting, where he strives to balance color and technique, drawing inspiration from both the Impressionists and Renaissance masters. Schnieders' subjects are eclectic, drawn from his immediate environment, the vast expanse of the internet, video stills, and his extensive magazine collection. This diverse range of sources fosters a constant dialogue within his paintings, allowing the figures and personas depicted to evolve and offer viewers a thoughtful and authentic perspective. Shifting between oil and watercolors, Schnieders' recent works are a testament to his adventurous spirit, delving into various pigmentations and color thresholds. His art is characterized by its multi-layered complexity, producing a lush oasis of color and depth that captivates the observer. Apart from his artistic pursuits, Schnieders is an avid surfer and has a deep appreciation for new wave and electronica music. His interests extend to Japanese culture and history, as well as vintage fashion from Italy, England, and France. As Schnieders continues to refine his technique, his focus remains on expanding the scale of his work, aiming to translate his intricate and vibrant style onto larger formats. This ongoing journey of artistic development ensures that his work remains fresh, engaging, and profoundly impactful.