Orla Barry (Ireland, 1969) is both an artist and a shepherd. She teaches sculpture and performance at SETU (South East Technological University). After living in Brussels for 16 years, she decided to move to her father’s farm in rural Wexford where, alongside her artistic activity, she keeps a flock of Lleyn sheep. Through performances and video and sound installations, her work deals with the physicality and poetics of oral language, drawing on the correspondences and tensions between the art practice and the farming environment in rural Ireland. Drawing on non-linear narratives imbued with research methodologies akin to autoethnography, her work addresses the history and semantics of words through an approach to writing and speaking that aims for a physical and embodied understanding of language as a visual form.

Her work has recently been shown in international exhibitions including MAC’s Grand Hornu (2024), Mu.Zee in Ostend (2019), Quetzal Art Centre (2017), Mothers Tankstation (2014), Museu Bernardo in Lisbon (2011), Irish Museum of Modern Art (2006), Camden Arts Centre in London (2005), W139 in Amsterdam (2005), S.M.A.K. in Ghent (2005), Argos (2002). Her performances have been presented as part of Dublin Theatre Festival (2023/2016), Performatik 17: The Brussels Biennial of Performance Art at Argos (2017), the WoWmen Festival KAAI (2020) and Playground at the M-Museum in Leuven (2019), the south London Gallery (2013), Bozar Brussels (2013), and Saturday Live, Tate Modern (2008).

Einat Tuchman (1968, Belgium/Israel) is a performer and choreographer. She is primarily interested in dance as an extension of the ordinary, of familiar movements and gestures drawn from everyday life. She focuses on themes such as human behaviour, communication and aspects of life that lie just beneath the surface of reality, while exploring the complex relationship between the self and the social environment in relation to territoriality and property. She collaborates with artistic institutions such as Beursschouwburg, KVS, Hiros, Buda, Pianofabriek… and is part of the political and artistic movement “State of the Arts”. She performs with Orla Barry, Guy de Cointet, Needcompany, Alain Platel, among others.