Kadia Dabo

Kadia Dabo, born in 1990, is a German designer and visual artist trained at FH Aachen and ESAD Saint-Étienne. Co-founder of ETWAS, she lives and works in Cologne, where her creative practice explores the sensitive connections between objects, users, stories and cultures. Her contextualized and human-scale approach examines bodily relationships and their interactions with environments, highlighting the unconscious choreographies of everyday gestures. Through interdisciplinary projects, she combines design, art, didactics and pedagogy to create sensitive and shared narratives where memory and gesture are at the heart of the creative process.

Currently studying Heilpädagogik at the University of Cologne, she enriches her approach with reflections on care and attention, exploring artistic and pedagogical practices as levers for social transformation and community engagement.

Kévin Cabaret

Kévin Cabaret, born in 1993, is a French visual artist and graphic designer trained at ESAD Saint-Étienne. Co-founder of ETWAS, he lives and works in Cologne, where he researches artistic practices as spaces for dialogue and social transformation. His artistic practice explores the construction of identities of places, territories and individuals through field investigations and varied mediums, creating sensitive narratives that transform fragments of everyday life into tools for rethinking contemporary challenges. Through an interdisciplinary approach, he examines the intersections between visual arts, graphic design and collective experimentation.

A core aspect of his work is the tension between infra-documentation and performative memory: how to capture fleeting details of an experience while activating living, evolving memories? His projects thus feed a dynamic archive, constantly reinjected into practice, where each trace is never fixed but becomes a vector to nourish and transform the creative process.

Governance

Executive Board Members:
Peter Ulrich (Chair);
Étienne Granier (Treasurer);
Odile Ulrich (Secretary)

Board of Directors Members:
Peter Ulrich, Etienne Granier, Odile Ulrich, Eva-Maria Hofkunst, Lukas Hofkunst, Valérie Bouchu

Download ETWAS bylaws:
https://www.associationetwas.fr/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ETWAS_statuts_27092024_signes.pdf

ETWAS is a French 1901 non-profit association (association loi 1901), structured around an Executive Board and a Board of Directors that serve primarily in representative and advisory rather than executive roles. The Board of Directors meets at least twice a year and supports the association on matters of political strategy, intellectual positioning and professional approach. It also participates in project programming and budget management, and implements internal supervision in times of crisis.

Day-to-day management, along with artistic, cultural and pedagogical direction of the association are handled by Kadia Dabo and Kévin Cabaret, who design, coordinate and implement ETWAS projects. They work closely with partner organizations, public authorities, participants and invited professionals, fostering project co-construction at every stage: from planning to evaluation.

ETWAS does not operate according to a fixed model, but rather through a logic of plasticity and adaptation. Each project is hyper-contextualized, designed according to the stakeholders involved, their expectations and claims. Participation can take various forms, often direct and open, ensuring projects remain true to ETWAS’s philosophy while incorporating diverse contributions.

Guest Professionals

Bérangère Bordez
Archaeology specialist and tour guide

Guilhem Causse
Filmmaker, musician and visual artist
http://guilhemcausse.fr/

Paul Lappin
Illustrator, musician, visual artist and graphic designer
http://www.lappindesign.com/

Jacob Lyon
Designer and visual artist
http://jobalcony.top/

Clara Montrieul
Designer and visual artist
https://claramontrieul.com/

Jörg Neitzert
Visual artist

Studio PetitMuller
Designers and craftspeople
https://www.studiopetitmuller.com/

Thomas Arthur Spallek
Graphic designer
https://thsp.de/

Juliette Ulrich
Filmmaker

Nicolas Verschaeve
Designer
https://nicolasverschaeve.com/fr