English guided tour through exhibition: “Whose voices are being heard?”

The power of words in different contexts, languages, images and sounds. Take a deeper look and understand the voices behind artistic objects through an hour-long guided tour with our knowledgeable guide and project coordinator – Paulina Maloy.

During an hour-long tour, you will hear the stories behind Lill’s surprising sculptural works. The exhibition coordinator will also talk about Yachi’s unexpected return to the copperplate engraving technique and her own series of watercolors relating to the problem of increasing electricity prices. Paulina will introduce us to the topics of queer-feminist activism pursued and photographed by Kine and explain how the identity of the Norwegian town of Hvitsten was defined in Viktoria’s work. You will also hear a sound work composed by Ingrid (Frvldz), and experience Aliona’s multi-element installation composed of artistic objects and video recordings entitled “Punctum”.

You will see (and hear) the collected voices in the form of a post-residence exhibition in the BWA Wrocław Główny gallery located on the mezzanine of the Main Railway Station in Wrocław at 105 Piłsudskiego Street. You can enter the gallery by elevator, selecting the second floor, or by side staircases (the escalators in front of the ticket offices are damaged). Entrance is free, not to be missed!

Everything most important happened outside the space of this exhibition – Agata Ciastoń, curator

This sentence well describes the presentation at the BWA Wrocław Główny gallery of the effects of the residency stays of six artists, which took place in the spring and summer of this year as part of the Polish-Norwegian program “Whose voices are being heard?”. The artists took up residence in their new surroundings for a while. It became a place for them to ask questions, create, have conversations, emotions and doubts. It was a very intense time, escaping attempts to encapsulate it in the rigid architectural and temporal framework of the exhibition. It’s hard to capture the variety of shared experiences and events in the projects created during this time alone. They are important, but one of many results of processes begun a few months ago. The exhibition, on the other hand, is only a variant of a multi-voiced story.

Persons who were invited to participate in the project experienced a number of difficult moments in their lives, and their artistic paths were sometimes winding. Many times they never got a chance to participate in a residency before, some of them in the flurry of daily duties did not find opportunities to realize their ideas. The residencies therefore became a special event, allowing them to devote themselves entirely to artistic practice, an opportunity to redirect their attention to the creative process. Kine Michelle Bruniera, Lill Yildiz Yalcin, Aliona Pazdniakova, Yachi Shian-Yuan Yang, Ingrid Frivold are artists living in Norway who spent a month in Wroclaw, while Viktoriia Tofan made a reverse trip and went from Wroclaw to the small Norwegian town of Hvitsten for four weeks. The works of all of them will be included in the exhibition, and will include photography, objects, painting, as well as video and sound composition.

The presentation is the voices of female artists with unique experiences and skills. Starting from a meeting in the circumstances of an artistic residency, it emphasises understanding how others think, process information, perceive the world and make decisions – on cognitive diversity. The works are united by sharpness and freshness of outlook, some are even a kind of manifesto in response to church or state interference in private life or the energy crisis. The artists, speaking from their positions as representatives of a minority group, call for inquisitiveness, the courage to, as Donna Harway wants, destabilize worlds of thought with other worlds of thought.

Whose voices are being heard? – post-residence exhibition

10.11.2023–31.12.2023
BWA Wrocław Główny Gallery
The mezzanine of Wrocław Główny railway station (105 Piłsudskiego Street, 50-085 Wrocław)

Openning hours:

Mon-Tue: closed
Wed–Thu: 12:00 p.m–8 p.m.
Fri-Sun: 12:00 p.m–6 p.m.

Program of curatorial tours and accompanying events

• 10.11.2023, 6:00 p.m.
  Exhibition opening
• 15.11.2023, 5:00 p.m.
  Curatorial tour with Agata Ciastoń (in Polish)
• 23.11.2023, 6:00 p.m.
  Discussion “Artist, is it a profession? Can you make a living from creative work?”
  with Yuriy Biley, Gerard Lebik, Małgorzata Miłoszewska, Paulina Maloy, Liliana Zaic
• 2.12.2023, 5:00 p.m.
  Guided tour in English with Paulina Maloy
• 5.12.2023, 5:00 p.m.
  „How does the art community and market work in Poland?”
  lecture by Katarzyna Młyńczak-Sachs
  Barbara, Świdnicka 8b Street
• 16.12.2023, 5:00 p.m.
  Curatorial tour with Agata Ciastoń with Polish Sign Language translation

Credits

• Artists: Kine Michelle Bruniera (she/her), Lill Yildiz Yalcin (she/her), Aliona Pazdniakova (she/her), Yachi Shian-Yuan Yang (she/her), Ingrid Frivold (she/her), Viktoriia Tofan (she/her)
• Curator: Agata Ciastoń
• Project coordinator: Paulina Maloy
• Cooperation: Romana Pomianowska, Paulina Brelińska-Garsztka, Laura Lempert
• Organizer: Wrocław Institute of Culture
• Co-organizer: BWA Wrocław Galleries of Contemporary Art
• Partners: Hvitsten Salong, Safemuse
• Exhibition architecture: Hubert Kielan
• PR: Anna Pazdej, Agata Kalinowska
• Visual Identification: Kamil Lach, Odra Studio
• Photo and video: Jerzy Wypych, Marta Sobala, Wojciech Chrubasik
• Translation: Marta Dziedziniewicz

„Whose voices are being heard? Exchange program for foreign artists from Poland and Norway” is co-financed by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway within the EEA Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 under the Culture Programme.