Biographies of the

THE “21”
BIOGRAPHIES
ARTISTS
FILTHY LUKER, 42 YEARS OLD – UK
Filthy Luker and Pedro Estrellas form an urban artist duo who create
environmental
intervention
and
site
specific
installations.
Working
internationally, their action started in an emblematic place of urban culture:
Bristol. They use an unexpected material: giant inflatable structures, creating a
spectacular effect that reminds us of comics. Through these playful and
monumental installations, their “Art Attacks” transform cities into jungles, giant monsters or trees
who watch us and strike us.
The artists have produced hundreds of inflatable sculptures and through their unique style and
innovation have become internationally renowned for their work especially in the street-art
movement, often using images of nature such as giant squids attacking cities, creating diversions
around huge banana skins and bringing attention to trees with googly eyeballs. Theses invading
shapes remind us the forces of nature, ready to return and conquer its rights back.
www.filthyluker.co.uk
NATALIE JEREMIJENKO, 48 YEARS OLD – USA, AUSTRALIA
Artist, engineer, eco-activist, Natalie Jeremijenko is one of the major players in
innovation, between arts, technology and environment. Named one of the
most influential women in the online journal Technology 2011 and one of the
inaugural top young innovators by the MIT Technology Review, Natalie
Jeremijenko directs the E N V I R O N M E N T A L H E A L T H C L I N I C and is an
associate professor in the NYU’s visual art department. She is also affiliated with
the computer science department and environmental studies program. In 2010, Neuberger
Museum produced a retrospective exhibition surveying recent work, entitled Connected
Environments, in addition to a solo exhibition entitled X in November, 2010 at the University of
Technology, Sydney. Her installations lead us to re our ways of life: T R E E O F F I C E , a coworking
space up in the trees, or the E N V I R O N M E N T A L H E A L T H C L I N I C are surprising works who invite
us to see the environment in a new way. She’s also a Ted Speaker, and her last intervention got
more than 400,000 views on the internet.
Natalie Jeremijenko is considered by Wired magazine as one of “the 4 most dynamic people on
earth” and received the prize of most influential woman in technology in 2011 by Fast Company.
www.nataliejeremijenko.com
TED : www.ted.com/speakers/natalie_jeremijenko
www.environmentalhealthclinic.net
SLATER JEWELL-KEMKER, 22 YEARS OLD – CANADA
Slater Jewell-Kemker is a 22 year old Canadian director who introduces her
generation to the international youth climate movement. Born in Los Angeles
to filmmaker parents, she has grown up with the idea that she could create her
own media and change the world.
Slater has been making films since she was six years old, and has been
recognized for her filmmaking and activism by the United Nations, Toronto International Film
Festival, Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, My Hero Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival and others.
She directed A N I N C O N V E N I E N T Y O U T H , a film whose main goal is to give young people
fighting against climate change a voice, but also to shift the perspective on the climate crisis from
one of fear and misunderstanding to one of the heart. Slater and A N I N C O N V E N I E N T Y O U T H are
currently working with Architecture for Humanity to develop a prototype of off-the-grid facilities for
small communities most affected by climate change. These shelters, designed to collect fresh
water and solar power, are more than shelter during times of emergency, they are year-round safe
spaces designed to address each village's cultural and communal needs.
www.aninconvenientyouth.com
www.imdb.com/name/nm2293123/
OPAVIVARÁ! COLETIVO, AGE AVERAGE: 34 YEARS OLD – BRAZIL
Opavivará! is an art collective from Rio de Janeiro, which develops actions in
public spaces of the city, galleries and cultural institutions, offering inversions in
the use of urban space through the creation of relational devices that provide
collective experiences.
Since its creation in 2005, the group has been actively participating in the contemporary arts
scene. The goal is to create situations that activate and increase power of life: how to drink and
dance together, or celebrate any day gathered in the square, at the beach or on the street.
Celebrating the carnival out of season, to increase its transformational power.
Concentrated on the A N T H R O P O C E N E , Opavivará!’s works are a space that worships the nonproductive and nonactive and it stands as a counter proposition to our accelerated times. Their
latest work, F O R M O S A D E C E L E R A T O R , is a kind of sloth temple, a space that allows our
accelerated daily routine to be stretched, opening up the path to a more organic, pleasurable and
reflexive fruition of our environment as a counter proposition to our accelerated, superficial and
volatile times.
www.opavivara.com.br
Chaîne YouTube : www.youtube.com/user/opavivara
LUCY + JORGE ORTA, 48 YEARS OLD, 61 YEARS OLD – UK,
ARGENTINA, FRANCE
Lucy and Jorge Orta’s collaborative practice draws upon urgent ecological and
social sustainability issues to create artworks employing diverse media,
including
drawing, sculpture, installation, couture, painting, silkscreen,
photography, video and light, as well as staged ephemeral interventions and
performances. Water, biodiversity, food, climate
change, freedom
of
movement and world-wide citizenship are at the heart of their work.
One of their major work is the P A S S P O R T A N T A R C T I C A of world-wide citizenship, signed by the
artists themselves, which takes the Antarctic as a universal symbol of the common good, of
preserving the environment and of freedom of movement. They have already delivered it to 60 000
people. Amongst their most emblematic series are: R E F U G E W E A R and B O D Y A R C H I T E C T U R E ,
portable minimum habitats bridging architecture and dress; H O R T I R E C Y C L I N G , exploring the
food chain in global and local contexts; 7 0 X 7 T H E M E A L , concerning the ritual of dining and its
role in community networking; N E X U S A R C H I T E C T U R E , establishing alternative modes of the
social bond; C L O U D S and O R T A W A T E R , addressing the increasing scarcity of this vital resource.
Their last performance, B A T T L E S H I P S , in Beijing (Ullens Center of Contemporary Art) deals with
the control of natural resources in the poles. For this project the artists received the Green Leaf
Award in 2007 for artistic excellence with an environmental message, presented by the United
Nations Environment Program.
Lucy + Jorge Orta’s artwork has been the focus of major solo exhibitions at the Venice Biennale
(1995); Johannesburg Biennial (1997); Vienna Secession (1999); Barbican Art Gallery, London (2005);
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2006); the Biennial of the End of the World,
Ushuaia, and the Antarctic Peninsula (2007); Shanghai Biennale (2012); MAXXI National Museum of
XXI Century Arts, Rome (2012); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield (2013); and Parc de la Villette,
Paris (2014).
www.studio-orta.com/fr
documentation : creative.arte.tv/fr/lucy-jorge-orta
LAURENT TIXADOR, 49 YEARS OLD – FRANCE
Laurent Tixador is a French artist who lives his art like a true expedition. Often
put into survival situations, he confronts his self to hostile environments, from
Greenland to Siberia. His adaptation is realized with interventions allying
construction and self-sufficiency. Thanks to his nomadism and zero-impact
approach, he is today an emblematic artist of ecological adaptation, from
“slow” to “zero-waste”.
From his works are liberated precious teachings about the human capacity to face urgent
situations and organize resilience. His performances are adventures, to put to the test mental and
physical capacities: to stay indoors for twenty four hours with hundreds of mosquitoes, going from
a city to another by foot to open his own works, going up rivers against water rapids and winds…
Laurent Tixador flirts with absurdity and burlesque, questioning our relation to reality and inviting
us to react to the climate crises with our own personal resources: heads and hands.
www.laurenttixador.com
YANN TOMA, 45 YEARS OLD – FRANCE
He is a French artist and art researcher. His works and thoughts concern the
political, environmental and media context. To him, the artist as a free media
has a civic responsibility to occupy public space and question citizens. He often
works with industrials, political sciences players and philosophers. In the 90’s,
Yann brought the old electricity company Ouest Lumière back to life: its place, archives and name.
It had been created in 1901. He is now president for life. A monograph of his work was written, that
presents his texts, interviews, 700 photographs and illustrations, and shows the extent of his works
and artistic reflections.
Active on the international environmental scene, he is artist member observer at the UN. His works
are exhibited in many collections, for example at the Centre Georges Pompidou or in the Fonds
national d'art contemporain collection. In 2011, his participative exhibition D Y N A M O - F U K U S H I M A
about the Japanese catastrophe at the Grand Palais brought more than 24 000 people in only 3
days.
www.ouest-lumiere.org
PIERRE DE VALLOMBREUSE, 53 YEARS OLD – FRANCE
Eager to be a witness of his time and his contemporaries and inspired by
Joseph Kessel, Pierre de Vallombreuse has become one of the most important
native peoples photographer of the world. He is the friend, ambassador and
photographer of these people. He has shared twenty seven years of his life with
forty six of these communities and created the first world-wide documentary
fund: a huge database of over more than 140,000 photographs.
Spokesman of these people, committed player on the ecological scene, he draws attention to the
importance of these “primary people” who are often the first victims of the ecological disasters:
lack of food, deforestation, global warming, pollution… all these crucial questions which, far from
being local, concern the whole of humanity. His everyday struggle is to raise awareness about
global warming and to preserve the vital link between man and nature.
He has published many books and is exhibited in France, India, Bolivia, etc. He has won numerous
awards, from the first prize at the "Golden Island" International Film Festival Adventure, Bailly,
2000, to the first Prize at the International mountain and adventure film festival, Graz (Austria),
2001, or the Leonard de Vinci prize by the Foreign Affairs Ministry in 1993.
www.pierredevallombreuse.com
www.franceculture.fr/personne-pierre-devallombreuse.html
WEN FANG, 38 YEARS OLD – CHINA
Artist Wen Fang has brought about a reflection on major social and
environmental issues. Internationally recognized, she is regularly exhibited in
China, France, Korea, and Italy, in the most prestigious galleries.
A graduate of the University of Arts of Beijing and and the Ecole nationale
supérieure Ens Louis Lumière, she places humans and nature at the heart of her
creations. To her, “The person we can really save is ourselves”. Knowing this, she suggests that we
should strive for change. Acting for women’s rights, illness, orphans, she also works on the
environment.
She says about R A I N (created from Beijing's household waste): "Economic development is a
sound idea, but how much money does it take to be truly wealthy? I spent my childhood playing in
the wilderness around here, while these kids are spending their childhood playing on the trash
heaps. I really wish these kids could grow up in gardens, just as we promised. But what I really
don’t know is, when we finally have enough money, whether or not the garden will be anything
more than a bunch of sharp knives…"
www.wenfang.org
Broom and mop : www.wenfang.org/en/archives/760
Rain : www.wenfang.org/en/archives/33
Home : www.wenfang.org/en/archives/727
YOUTH
MARIAM ALLAM, 24 YEARS OLD – EGYPT
Mariam is an undergraduate majoring in Political Science at Cairo University.
She is set to graduate in 2015 with also completing a minor in Public
Administration. Mariam is passionate about environment and sustainable
development with a special focus on climate change issues and climate policy
and she has been following the UNFCCC climate negotiations for 3 years. She
has also been following the sustainable development goals both nationally and internationally.
Mariam is a member of the Egyptian National Youth Consultants to the National Population
Council, representing youth voices in the National Post-2015 Development Agenda. She is Cairo
University representative at the World Environment Students Network (WSEN), the National
Coordinator of the Arab Youth Climate Movement (AYCM) an independent body that works to
create a generation-wide movement across the Middle East & North Africa to solve the climate
crisis, and to assess and support the establishment of legally binding agreements to deal with
climate change issues within international negotiations. She is also the focal person of the African
Youth Initiative on Climate Change (AYICC) an umbrella initiative of all youth organizations in
Africa working on climate change. Meantime, she is the Egyptian Civil Society representative at the
UNFCCC National government delegation meeting in preparation for COP20 and COP21.
Thanks to her multiple hats, she is one the major players on climate change in the Middle East.
www.ayicc.net
www.aycm.org
JULIETTE DECQ, 24 YEARS OLD – FRANCE
Juliette Decq is one of the major young committed players at an international
scale. She runs, at only 24 years old, the project Cop in MyCity. That project is
launched by the Think & Do Tank CliMates and is an international plan of
action for training and mobilizing young people in dozens of cities all around
the world, on the COP occasions (Conferences on climate). They work on
making the COP 21 a success. CliMates provides a toolkit for negotiations and mobilization and
thus gives a voice to the young people.
Graduate from Sciences-Po (the prestigious French political university) and University Pierre et
Marie Curie (Paris VI) with a environmental political science degree, she is a representative of the
Young at the Regional Council of Ile-de-France (Paris region). Juliette is also part of French
network WARN (We are ready now) that gathers all the student associations for climate that
organizes the COY (Conference of Youth) in December 2015.
www.studentclimates.org
www.copinmycity.weebly.com
LINH DO, 24 YEARS OLD – AUSTRALIA
At only 24 years old, Linh Do is already a major figure of the international scene
committed to climate. When she was only 15 years old, she launched the
Change A Million Light Bulbs campaign in Australia which influenced the
government to limit incandescent light bulbs in the country.
She co-founded Our Say and TheVerb where she now works full time, an
international media that intends to bring a better comprehension of today’s greatest stakes and to
change the way that traditional media treat these subjects. Gathering experts from more than 17
countries, these articles are published and relayed by Al Jazeera, Reuters, The Huffington Post,
Crikey, Jezebel, etc.
Named World Economic Forum Global Shaper in 2013, she is also Australian Geographic Young
Conservationist of the Year (2013) and one of Junior Chamber International Outstanding Young
Persons of the World. She is based in Melbourne, Australia with extensive experience overseas.
www.theverb.org
TED : www.youtube.com/watch?v=32GPv32hkHE
CHARLES-ADRIEN LOUIS, 28 YEARS OLD – FRANCE
Charles Adrien Louis is President of Avenir Climatique, a French association
that raises young people’s awareness of climate change and energy topics
through participative activities. The association measures carbon impact of
human activities, finding unexpected subjects to draw their attention. For
example, during the 2012 presidential election in France, Avenir Climatique
calculated the consequences of each candidate’s campaign on global
warming.
Through these activities, Charles-Adrien fights for a societal shift and wants to show that the young
people are ready to act. He is very active in the WARN project (We Are Ready Now). For three
years, he has also been an entrepreneur of change by founding B&L, a consulting company in
sustainable development and carbon engineering. Charles-Adrien has made his everyday life a
constant struggle for a better place and lives in a carbonfree perspective.
www.avenirclimatique.org
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RirqzxJiHlk
WANG TIANJU, 24 YEARS OLD – CHINA
Wang Tianju is a campaign director at Greenovation Hub. Founded in 2012,
Greenovation Hub (G:HUB) is a Chinese environmental NGO that combines
the efficiency of grass-root and international NGOs. G:HUB is committed to
foster China's green transition hence global sustainable development. It
adopts new media and new technologies to create the most practical tools and
interact with green citizens to search for solutions for China and for the world's ecological crisis.
Wang Tianju is a specialist of green finance. His skills range from research to concrete
implementation of green credit policy in HeBei province.
He received his master degree in the University of Exeter (UK) in climate change and risk
management, and his bachelor degree of financial economics in the University of Swansea.
www.ghub.org/en
ENTREPRENEURS
TARIQ AL-OLAIMY, 26 YEARS OLD – BAHRAIN
Tariq Al-Olaimy is a social entrepreneur based in Bahrain. He is the cofounder
of 3BL Associates, Bahrain’s first social impact consultancy and thinkand-dotank on sustainable and regenerative development of the Middle East and
North African region. He is also co-founder of Al Tamasuk, an award winning
social entrepreneurial approach to foster social cohesion and create
employment opportunities amongst excluded communities through health education projects.
Tariq is a Biomimicry specialist (biomimicry intends to solve human problems using the brilliance of
nature’s design) and a driving force for a more sustainable and regenerative Middle East. He is
also a climate blogger, Adopt a Negotiator member, World Economic Forum Global Shaper, and
was a founding national coordinator of the Arab Youth Climate Movement. In 2013, he contributed
to an Arab World Position Policy Paper for COP19.
www.3blassociates.com
www.globalshapers.org/fr/shapers/tariq-al-olaimy
www.adoptanegotiator.org/author/tariqalolaimy/
FRÉDÉRIC BARDEAU, 39 YEARS OLD – FRANCE
Frederic Bardeau is co-founder of Simplon.co, a “solidarity factory” of
programming where he combines social and digital innovation. Every 5
months, Simplon trains 24 underprivileged smart people (young people from
the suburbs, handicapped people, seniors…) on web development, innovation,
and helps them to build web start-ups for social well-being.
Along with this project, Frederic Bardeau develops a vision of social economy and digital
democracy, and hopes to “link the digital, the power of code, politics and ethics”. Before Simplon,
Frederic founded, along with Laurent Terrisse, a responsible communication agency “Limite”,
considered today as a remarkable player in the field of communication in France. Former student
of the prestigious military school Saint-Cyr, he is also the father of five children.
www.simplon.co
CÉDRIC CARLES, 38 YEARS OLD – FRANCE/SWITZERLAND
Passionate about energy concerns, Cédric Carles uses his SolarSoundSystem
(100% autonomous DJ booth, powered by solar and dynamo energy) to
promote a different ecology and a culture of commitment. Thanks to his
invention, he develops an unprecedented alliance of ecology, conviviality and
solidarity.
SolarSoundSystem projects are all around the world (Haiti, India, Brazil, Cameroun, and Taïwan),
and have been certified by UNESCO Switzerland under the category of "The decade of United
Nations for the Education of sustainable development". Cédric also created ITEX ("ITinerant
EXposition", or, "Mobile Exhibition"), an NGO dedicated to educating schools on renewable
energy/energy efficiency. His critical reflection on energy technology and progressive living has
aroused the Department of Research of the Cité du Design’s interest as well as the Leroy Martin
think tank, with whom he currently collaborates.
Cédric wears several hats: designer, first-aid energy worker, independent researcher in sciences
and technology history, and DJ. When he presses the Play button, the ecological transition is on
fire.
www.atelier2ce.org
BEN KNIGHT, 28 YEARS OLD – NEW ZEALAND
Ben Knight is a co-founder of Loomio, an online tool for collaborative
decisionmaking, built by a core team in Wellington, New Zealand. To him,
“Loomio is all about building tools to make it easy for as many people as
possible to put their heads together, to come up with better solutions than
anyone would have come up with on their own.”
Loomio is being used by thousands of groups worldwide, from community organisations and startup businesses, to innovators like the Wikimedia Foundation. Loomio won the MIX Prize Digital
Freedom Challenge in 2014, an international management innovation award run by Polly LaBarre,
cofounder of Fast Company magazine, who says “The beauty of Loomio is that it transcends the
tradeoff between efficiency and engagement.”
Ben has an academic background in the evolution of collective intelligence, a practical
background in grassroots community organising, and a passion for the potential of technology to
spur positive social change. He was closely involved with the Occupy movement in 2011, where he
got massively empowering results of collective decision-making on a large scale.
www.loomio.org
TED : www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vCL4I19o9U
www.reinventors.net/content/ben-knight
DAVID KOBIA, 36 YEARS OLD – USA, KENYA
Social entrepreneur David Kobia is the cofounder of Ushahidi, the trustee of
iHub_Nairobi and the manager of BRCK.
Ushaihidi is a non-profit software company that develops free and open-source
software for information collection, and interactive mapping for use in crisis
response. It helps media, governments, NGOs and social movements to deal
with earthquakes, wildfires, floods, social crisis, and citizen mobilization. One of its tools,
Crowdmap, has a large application, allowing anybody to build a map using a collaborative
method. Ushahidi won the NetSquared N2Y3 Mashup Challenge in 2008, received the MacArthur
Award in 2013 and the Global Adaptation Index Prize in 2012. iHub Nairobi’s Innovation Hub for
the technology community is an open space for the technologists, investors, tech companies and
hackers in the area.
BRCK is a team of software developers, engineers and technologists who are from Africa and live
there. In 2010, David was a recipient of MIT Technology Review’s TR35 award (35 top innovators
under 35) and the Humanitarian of the Year award. In 2011, he accepted a Webby Award on behalf
of Ushahidi.
www.ushahidi.com
www.brck.com/about
www.ihub.co.ke
LUHUI YAN, 31 YEARS OLD – CHINA
Luhui Yan is the founder and CEO of Carbonstop, China's first carbon
management software and consulting service provider. Since 2011, Carbonstop
helped more than 500 organizations reduce their environmental impact.
Carbonstop collaborates with United Nations Sustainable Consumption, World
Resource Institute, China NDRC, CDP, TUV NORD (technical service provider
with world-wide activities), British Standard Institute, etc.
Luhui Yan’s expertise is recognized at the international scale. He is an expert reviewer of the UN
IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) and a member of the Carbon Disclosure Project Technical
Experts. He was member of the China Youth Delegate for UNFCCC 2012 Doha Climate Change
Conference. He graduated from MSc in Computer Science in Oxford University (UK).
www.carbonstop.net
INFO:
http://artofchange21.com
Facebook : Art of Change 21
Twitter : @Artofchange21
Youtube : Art of Change 21