CommonLAB 2024: Meet the artists

Common Stories focuses on the emerging artists who will shape the European scene in the coming years. Supported with a variety of tools, references and skills. through the lab programme, the selected artists will be better positioned to create strong and engaging narratives with greater visibility. Challenging representations and imaginations, they will inspire other vocations and generate interest coming from wider circles of presenters and audiences.

This year, this travelling laboratory brings together 9 emerging artists. Taking place over eight weeks, the laboratory convenes at three venues in Europe and in Maputo, Mozambique, in order to explore working contexts outside Europe.

The artists selected for the project live and work in Europe, and explore the shifting notions of identity and diversity in a rapidly changing European society.

This year, Common LAB starts in Lisbon (17 to 30 June, Espaço Alkantara). After that, it will travel to Maputo (2 to 15 September, CulturArte) and Bobigny (14 to 27 October, MC93), wrapping up in Brussels (28 October to 10 November, Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles).

Artists & projects

Avildseen Bheekhoo, Metz-based multidisciplinary artist
In Hollanda, in the aftermath of the Mauritius Island’s sinking, a lost VHS footage, shot just after the 1994 cyclone Hollanda, is discovered, revealing a psychotic episode revolving around a horny werewolf and an island on the brink of a racial war.

Diego Bragà, Lisbon-based trans and non-binary Luso-Brazilian theatre-maker, filmmaker and author
An androgynous opera, We at the nightclub suffer together welcomes broken hearts at the end of the night and to celebrate the idea of a beautiful future together.

Nadim Bahsoun, Lebanese dancer, choreographer and queer activist, based between Paris and Brussels
Interactive performance, System Error questions the links between historical gender and body perceptions and the production of violence.

Azani V. Ebengou, actress, writer, theatre director, based in Marseille
Her Kongo Chroniques, a theatre series in eight episodes, recounts the live of a Congolese family line throughout time, from precolonial times to the future.

Lucía García Pullés, dancer, choreographer, actress and author, originally from Buenos Aires, based in Paris
Mother Tongue tells García Pullés’ personal story between tongues, and with her tongue, blending the need to survive, the fear of disappearing and the desire for fiction.

Jin Xuan Mao, actor, writer, performer, queer activist, based in Paris
The story of a filial relationship, My Odyssey is an ode to the obstinate quest for oneself, an incandescent celebration of reconciliation and fulfillment.

Inés Sybille Vooduness, dancer, choreographer born in Barcelona, based in Lisbon
Our digital lakou, a performance generating complex rituals and a diasporic and digital revisiting of the haitian lakou.

Pankaj Tiwari, Indian multidisciplinary artist, based in Amsterdam
While deciding global ethicalities, the West conveniently forgets individual realities existing in the same world at the same time. Converting Shame into Dream is an attempt to tell other stories...

Agathe Yamina Meziani, Belgo-Kabylo-Greek performer and dramaturg, based in Brussels
Kabylifornie develops a journey through layers of identity, personal and collective memory, and history.