Foreign body?
ZA*Group

  • Foreign body?

    illustration: Kaja Kusztra

Foreign body? How cultural workers from abroad are changing the Polish artistic landscape?

Poland is no longer a homogeneous country. Mass migration to Poland is a fairly new phenomenon. Along with representatives of other professions, more and more artists come here to live and work in the local field of art. We invited people from different geographic contexts to participate in the discussion and reflect on the role of cultural workers from abroad in Poland.

What is it like to work and function in the Polish artistic environment while being from another country? How open is the Polish artistic community? What kind of changes are needed to facilitate the integration process? How can a different experience and angle of view of individuals enrich the discussions taking place in the country?

The debate will be hosted in English. The meeting will be broadcast on the Museum's profile on FB.

In 2020, ZA * Group (Yuriy Biley, Yulia Krivich, Vera Zalutskaya) initiated a long-term project devoted to the experience of foreign artists who are coming to and living in Poland. Its first result was a ZINE, published with the support of Krytyka Polityczna, available here.

Sarmen Beglarian

is an Armenia-born, Warsaw based curator and gallerist. He graduated in 2001 at the Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw with a degree in Psychology at the Philosophy Department and in 2006 at the Curatorial Studies Department of the Art History Institute in Jagiellonian University in Kraków. From 2007 he is co-curating Biuro Wystaw (Exhibition Bureau) at the Polish Modern Art Foundation. From 2012 he led the Keret House Project and Artists-in-Residence Program in the Keret House, Warsaw. He curated and and co-curated several exhibitions in Poland and abroad, among others at the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv, Latvian Museum of Photography in Riga, Ludwig Museum — Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest, Museum of Yugoslav History in Belgrade, MSU Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli in Venice.

Cristina Ferreira

is an artist from Lisbon, Portugal, living and working in Poznan, Poland. She got her B.A in painting by the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon (2012) and M.F.A in Painting by the University of Fine Arts of Poznan (2015). Works on the themes of foreignness, displacement and alienation mainly through performances, installations and participatory projects. Co-starter of the Portuguese-polish residency program 'Unsolicited Works' (Warsaw, 2017). Artist-in-residence at Galeria Miejska BWA Bydgoszcz (2018), Kvost - Kunstverein Ost in Berlin (2020/2021) and part of Galeria Sandra (2019).

Janek Simon

is a conceptual artist and an occasional curator based in Warsaw. He is inspired by travel, history of science and political ideas, and the practice and ethics of the DIY culture, always filtering the theories through his personal experience though. In recent years he developed a body of work investigating notions of distance and difference between places, working on projects that try to remap semi-peripheral position of Eastern Europe through geographical experiments. His works was shown, among others, at Manifesta 7, Liverpool Biennale, Centre Pompidou Metz, and numerous individual exhibitions in major public art institutions in Poland and elsewhere (Arnolfini Bristol, Casino Luxembourg, Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, CSW Zamek Ujazdowski and others).

Vera Zalutskaya

is a Belarus-born contemporary art curator living and working in Warsaw. Interests mainly in art of Eastern and Central Europe in the context of postcolonial studies. In 2013 she graduated from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, in 2014 from European Humanities University in Vilnius, in 2020 she got M.A. in curatorial studies at Jagiellonian University. She curated exhibitions in Belarus, Poland and Serbia. From 2020 is a member of the ZA* (foreign artists living in Poland) Group.

Katie Zazenski

is an American-born, Warsaw-based artist, curator, writer, and lecturer whose practice is centered around interconnectedness, rhizomatic structures, multi-dimensionality, community and care. Zazenski has been the co-director of the independent, Warsaw-based art space Stroboskop since 2018, most recently she has joined the editorial team at BLOK Magazine (PL) where she focuses on the community of non-institutional, artist-run/project spaces in Eastern Europe.
 

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