Shuaitong Zong, a Berlin-based artist born in 1995 in Tianjin, China, explores identity, cultural displacement, and alternate realities through her work. With a background in Communication Design and Media Art from the University of Art and Design in Karlsruhe (HfG) and studies at the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ÉCAL), Zong works across multiple media, with a focus on acrylic painting.

Characterized by bold hues and evocative figurative motifs, Zong’s art examines the intersection of personal history and cultural identity. Her recent work delves into parallel timelines, contemplating the “what ifs” of an alternate adolescence in China. Through intimate scenes and carefully observed moments, she explores how location and cultural context shape identity. Her works, tinged with nostalgia, capture those private wonderings of a life unlived – the possibility of different friendships, deeper cultural connections, and another version of self that might have emerged had she remained in China.

Caroline Heinecke, born in 1986 in Nordhausen in Thuringia in the Harz region, lives, and works in Berlin.

She studied visual communication at the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences in Dessau. In 2017, she decided to express her flair for compositions of colors, shapes and arrangements through another medium – photography. Heinecke studied at the Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie in Berlin from 2017–2020. She is passionate about still life and fine art photography.

The patient objects are often supporting actors until the photographer lets us look through their eyes. The reality reflected in her photographs appears slightly enraptured, two-dimensional, as it were centered and alive in its motionlessness. Starting from staged things and situations, she creates a visual world that deals with themes such as niche societies, identity, and the future.

In addition to various group exhibitions such as 2022 at Les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles or Copenhagen Photo Festival (2020) and Villa Grisebach (2024) she can look back on a number of publications. 

Deividas Sidlauskas, born 1986 in Lithuania, is currently based in Germany. 
 
As a self-taught artist, his work does not follow a plan or a technique that he has learned; rather, by just doing what he finds to be unusual for the usual things we see daily.

What really counts to the Artist is to stay real for the self evolving process. The best inspiration for the artist is everyday life and keep on diving in the process itself.
 
From different distances, the complexity of his work reveals itself to the viewer. 
The works are loud, large, and some kind of dirty and appear from close up as well as from a distance. 
 
In his own words: I want my paintings to live, that the viewer also feels that presence, recognize his own issues looking at it, gets disturbed from it.
I'm not doing it for the beauty, I'm doing it to make you feel something what you want or don't want to feel.

Katha is a visionary designer and community builder. With a passion for lifelong learning, her expertise extends beyond uncommon, as she also researches and teaches design at a university, focusing on participatory education and sustainability. At uncommon, she plays a key role in directing the brand’s playful, refined aesthetic. Her curatorial approach combines a clear vision for identity and quality with an openness to exploration and the unconventional.

Pelle is an interface designer with a foundation in product design. He shifted away from the field after becoming disillusioned with its often wasteful consumption of resources to chase fleeting fashion trends. Today, with uncommon, he has rekindled his love for furniture and objects through the sourcing and restoration of pre-owned pieces. He especially enjoys how often neglected objects get elevated through restoration and cherished for decades to come. “Few modern products match the quality and longevity of pre-2000s furniture”, he points out, “if made the same way today, they’d cost a fortune”


Together they are uncommon, a duo fuelled by a love for designs that can be pulled out of the past and reintroduced into contemporary contexts, to work and shine even more.
Their collection blends all eras of styles into a playful, eclectic mix of pieces that tell stories and spark joy. “It’s not about limiting the selection to known designers and classics,” Katha says “but celebrating the naivety, absurdity, and charm of every object, by being free in picking pieces, regardless of their artificial value.”

This is me - Anni Heuchel. I was born in 1990 in East Germany. I am a self- taught artist who feels that a great body of work is carried by its content and lesser by its technique.

Modern art has shown far too often that it just takes some neon tubes and great vanity to create an oeuvre which is considered to be spirited and valuable. I am not here for that.

I studied philosophy, sociology, art history and cultural anthropology in Potsdam and Berlin. Right now I explore questions of human identity in the form of portraits, but also feel very much at home in surrealistic, overburdened, colourful settings. I am interested in punkrock as a state of mind, sexual identity, feminism and morality.

Meet Helena Leeners, born on October 31, 1996, in Münster, now living and creating in Berlin.

Helena is a self-taught artist and visual storyteller whose work ignites the imagination of her audience. Instead of focusing on realistic portrayals of the world, she uses her art to create new narratives where pop culture, current events, and personal impressions subtly collide.


Artistic Journey & Influences

Although Helena never had formal art training, she started digital painting as a teenager, developing a unique style that now carries over into her analog work. Her self-taught approach allows her to experiment freely with different techniques. Her career as a Creative Conceptioner in advertising has influenced her creative process, along with artists like Philip Guston. She also draws inspiration from the figurative and often humorous works of contemporary artists such as Conny Maier, Tamara Malcher, and Fabian Warnsing.


Art Style

Helena’s work is known for bold, vibrant figurative acrylic paintings with sharp contrasts. Her signature graphic style, shaped by her early digital art, is now blended with raw elements—scratched lines, dry brushstrokes, and rough layers of paint. This tension between precision and rawness gives her art an exciting dynamic. One striking detail in her figures? Red noses.


Exhibitions

Her first show was in 2018 at the group exhibition “Sich verlieren” in Bielefeld. Since then, Helena has participated in various group exhibitions, including the “No Art No Home” series. Most recently, her work was showcased in 2023 at the “Grober Unfug” exhibition at Berlin’s Haus der Statistik, a hotspot for experimental art.


Press Features

Helena was spotlighted in the music and pop culture magazine Motor.de and named a “Gen Z artist to keep an eye on” by MAE (@mae.community) Art Startup.