Shortlisted Artists

We would like to introduce you to our shortlisted artists. These artists explore wholes and holes with work that is ambitious, provocative and insightful. They are very much a part of the story of The Doughnut! You can see more of their work by following the links.



Julie Derbyshire is a photographic artist whose research-based practice explores themes of fragility, transience and our shared human condition. By exploring the potential of the photographic object to conjure new meaning, she invites viewers to question what lies beyond the image.   Northern Calling is inspired by a growing personal longing to return to the north, to the landscape of childhood—space, peace and deep connection with nature. Beyond the beauty and majesty of this wilderness is an awareness of its fragility. Once blanketed in trees, the far northwest of Scotland now bears the marks of human activity and climate change. These images are disrupted by ethereal layers of trees and branches that awkwardly encroach into traditional depictions of the sublime, offering a contemplation on what was, what is, and our urgent need to care for a fragile environment.

juliederbyshire.com
@juliederbyshire


Enrico Dedin (1996, Treviso) is a media artist and art director based in Venice. His video works are included in the catalogue of Heure Exquise!, distributor of the audiovisual collections of the Musée du Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay. He is the author of the literary manifesto of Metaluddism, published in Il Foglio Clandestino. Graduating with honours in ‘New Technologies of Art’ from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, he also works as an art director in multimedia communication.   1328 QR Codes (Quick Response Code) printed on public posters, flyers, and newspapers have been sabotaged and made illegible, transformed into NR Codes (No Response Codes). A code is always a codex—a law—but often we are unaware of it; the unreadability of these codes becomes a symptom and revelation of the law itself.

QR codes reflect an era dreaming of constant connection. Information overload invades the cityscape, de-realising it and reducing it to hypertext, influencing our ability to feel and think. NR Code becomes liberation from this logic—an interruption of digital flow, a necessary moment of reflection, ambiguity, silence and nothingness.

behance.net/enricodedin
@enrico.dedin

Eyez明瞳, from Haikou, China, and raised across Ürümqi, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and now Montreal, creates immersive, non-linear works spanning XR film, interactive art, and indie games.

Eyez’s works are held in collections including Beijing Times Art Museum and ELEKTRA Montréal, and have been shown internationally at ISEA, VIFF, Mutek, and Videomedeja.

Recent projects include TamagotchU! (VIFF Signals, Mutek 2025), Entrance of Deity (ISEA2025 Seoul, ELEKTRA collection), Wandering at the Exit of Deity (29th Videomedeja, ISEA2025 Seoul), and Portal of Chaos (Beijing Times Art Museum, touring China).

 TamagotchU is an AI creature driven by real-time audience emotional data, creating collective experiences and human–AI companionship through organic interactivity. Emotion-generative multimodal models run locally on edge devices, challenging GPU-intensive AI practices. By making AI accessible to diverse communities, it opens new futures for AI in creativity and humanity—AI doesn’t oppose humans; it can be one of us.

TamagotchU reimagines AI as a decentralised system, using low-end devices as collaborative nodes. It challenges centralised monopolies and reduces carbon footprints through low-energy workflows and community input. The project promotes open-source, low-impact solutions, connecting to lo-tech and frugal computing movements. Inspired by the Yangtze river pufferfish’s cuteness and environmental sensitivity, it links human emotion to species-specific impacts.  

@eyez.bin

Nasrah Omar is an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, installation, XR, and collage.

Her work has been shown at TV Centre (London), Pioneer Works (NY), The Photographers’ Gallery, and La MaMa Galleria, and featured in Aperture, Der Greif, and Portrait of Humanity Vol. 5. A recipient of Google’s Image Equity Fellowship and NYFA’s New Work Grant, Nasrah develops site-responsive practices merging AI/XR with collective healing and counter-archival research. She holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and is completing an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art.   Trace (in continuum) explores ancestral memory through buried resistance histories, healing recipes, and ritual spaces of care. It honours cultural and spiritual memory through invocation, excavation, and reimagining. Rooted in third-culture experience and itinerant belonging, the work engages diasporic South Asian histories while extending to cross-cultural geographies of human and more-than-human migration, solidarity networks, and collective healing practices.

Technology enables contact with ancestral revenants through digital channels. AI chatbots and text exchanges become oracular tools—haunted interfaces for spectral voices. These digital dialogues, AR interventions, and medicinal plant recipes from Ayurveda resurface decolonial knowledge systems. The space echoes real-time rendered video games: nature fractures through containment grids, digital architectures overrun by flora and fungal networks. This entanglement between synthetic and elemental disrupts colonial schematics of space, time, and memory, allowing mycelial pathways of remembrance and repair to take root.

nasrahomar.com
@nasrah__omar

Nika Sandler works with photography, AI and text, exploring human and non-human gaze, gender, pleasure, creepiness and disgust. Her work has been published in i-D, Dazed, Libération, PhotoVogue, Der Greif, and many others. She is the winner of The Photographers’ Gallery’s Small File Photo Festival 2023.   The Ancient Depths: Confronted by the ecological crisis, Sandler contemplates extinction through collaboration with AI. She dives into ancient waters to capture fossilised inhabitants whose existence was interrupted. The work illustrates life’s fragility and prompts reflection on the current wave of extinction shaped by humanity.

nikasandler
@nika.sandler