Three Questions to the 2026 ArtsLink Fellows
PUBLISHED: 02/06/26 | 🕑 7 mins
We asked the 2026 ArtsLink Fellows three questions as they are about to start their fellowships.
Six voices from Palestine, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Hungary and Uzbekistan.
The 2026 ArtsLink Fellows are:
♦️ Areej Ashhab, Palestine, artist, architect, and researcher engaging in community land practices and material ecologies
♦️ Nabila Horakhsh, Afghanistan/Germany, artist and curator working with the topics of oppression, religious extremism and gender discrimination
♦️ Zumrad Mirzalieva, Uzbekistan, photographer and filmmaker focusing on the issues of agency, migration and identity
♦️ Kseniia Opria, Ukraine, curator, editor, and filmmaker specializing in documentary and experimental cinema. She explores the intersection of civilian and military realities during wartime.
♦️ Altynai Osmo, Kyrgyzstan, artist with a practice rooted in Central Asian nomadic heritage and politically driven by social awareness and women’s empowerment
♦️ Mátyás Tóth, Hungary, a puppet and theater artist working with issues of social impact and responsibility
What feelings keep showing up in your work?
Zumrad
I think it is often this blurred line between hope and uncertainty. A lot of my work sits with things that are unresolved, like transformed landscapes, gender roles and spaces, histories that were distorted, speculative/ or imagined futures. I am interested in that fragile liminal space of “in-betweenness.”
Areej
I’ve been thinking deeply about my relationship with ancestral knowledge. When intergenerational channels for its transmission are severed, what other ways exist to reconnect with it? This question has been central to my work, using language, song, material experimentation, and collective making as alternative channels for the recovery and activation of ancestral knowledge—a liberatory practice against ongoing settler-colonial enclosure and erasure.
Nabila
My work carries a constellation of emotions, including fear, hope, sorrow, resistance, and a deep longing for freedom and the discovery of beauty. Living in the shadow of war, injustice, gender discrimination, and migration alongside encounters with new landscapes and nature has left a profound imprint on my inner world, and these emotions naturally emerge through contrast colors, form, and atmosphere in my work.
Kseniia
Everything I’m working on right now is connected to healing and hope.
Altynai
Feelings of childlike curiosity, love for my culture, admiration for the strength of all women and contemplation on the beauty of Nature. But also, anger, grief and hopelessness sometimes. Whatever life evokes in me, it is in my work.
What's been motivating you lately?
Matyas
The Hungarian autocratic regime has just fallen after 16 years of repression, systemic fear, and queer oppression. Seeing our decade of activist and artistic resistance finally bloom gives me literal chills every day since then.
Kseniia
Honestly, lately I have been moved by photos of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians returning to their families from captivity. Every time I see their faces filled with happiness, I’m reminded that people can endure even the hardest circumstances.
Altynai
Grief. I have lost 5 most loved souls of my life in one year, and I am determined to create as I feel I have very limited time on this Earth…Mortality is an excellent, most sternest motivator. Unlimited combinations of complex raw emotions release a crazy high, almost like during an adrenaline rush. I am thrilled to creatively explore my grief. I think I have a very exciting creative period ahead of me; I’ll rock climb mountains of grief, cry out millions of salty lakes, but I’m sure I’ll also dance through the forests of love.
Nabila
In recent times, the resilience of Afghan women in the face of injustice, as well as the solidarity, shared grief, and global protests for justice against oppression and anti-human policies, have been a profound source of inspiration in my work. This reminds me that we are all parts of one human body. For me, this enduring struggle represents the triumph of light over darkness.
Zumrad
I have been drawing a lot of energy from being outdoors and learning through direct experience. I just came back from Uzbekistan, where together with DAVRA and SAVA we organised a research seminar on the Syr Darya river. I’ve found this kind of field-based, learning-by-doing approach very healing and effective: being outside, observing, walking, listening, and creating spaces where people can think and learn together through place.
What's the relationship between your work and the people you work with?
Areej
It is important for me to work with people who share an emotional connection to the projects we do together; knowing we are equally moved—even for different reasons—is what keeps me going. Recently, I’ve been involved in one-on-one collaborations, whether with a sound designer or a plasterer. That shared intimacy and the knowledge that the work touches everyone involved is precious to me.
Kseniia
I invited the protagonist of my documentary film to apply to the film festival where I work. Now, the final scene of my story will be her premiere at Docudays UA. So the relationship feels tight, harmonious, and sometimes almost magical.
Matyas
We co-create a brave space.
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