Artist duo Martinka Bobrikova and Oscar de Carmen have worked together since 2005. She comes from Slovakia, and he is Spanish. They both hold MFA from Nordic Sound Art program and Malmo Art Academy, Sweden.
The artists create works in public space based around the idea of an ​​open interaction with the environment, installations, sound and site-specific works, they set up meeting platforms. The duo carry out their activities both inside and outside galleries, going beyond the framework of institutional dialogue. They believe that the above context is emerging as one of the only exchanging environments to promote social transformation. Such approach allows them to critically investigate their roots and social habits and question the mechanisms which make up the current systems of values.
Since 2012, Bobrikova and de Carmen have run Nomad AIR, a Nomadic artist-in-residence program. In 2018, the duo began curating their first annual gathering, anti-symposium IECES (International Encounters of Community and Environmental Sociolog). The anti-symposium serves as a meeting place where the participants can share and exchange their experiences with local communities with the objective to discuss the future of independent cultural frameworks, explore the production of knowledge, and examine the possibility of non-hierarchical structures.
For more than a decade, the artists have run a number of long-term community based projects held under the name Kitchen Dialogues. The program provides a framework for residencies in various locations and collaborations with various groups, combining social field research, site-specific installations and social events.
Martinka Bobrikova and Oscar de Carmen have participated in several residencies, including: SaSa Art Project (Cambodia), Jatiwangi Art Factory (Indonesia), AIR Krems (Austria), Hablar en Arte / Curators Network in Madrid, Arctic Art Institute in Arkhangelsk, Seoul Art Space Geumcheon, HomeBase Saitama (Japan), Nida art Colony (Lithuania), Latent Spaces (Singapore) or MeetFactory in Prague.