Hear the voice of the minority. The exhibition “Whose voices are being heard?” opens in November at BWA Wrocław Główny Gallery
The power of words in different contexts, languages, images and sounds – from November 10, the BWA Wrocław Główny gallery will host an exhibition that is the creative voice of minority women artists living in Norway and Poland. The exhibition is a summary of the residency stays of female artists working on the other side of the Baltic Sea, who have visited Wroclaw in recent months – and one who has traveled in the opposite direction.
The exhibition is the finale of the project under the same name which has been ongoing since mid-2022. – implemented by the Wrocław Institute of Culture together with the Norwegian organizations, Hvitsten Salong and Safemuse. Its activities were aimed at equalising the opportunities and visibility of minority artists and creating safe and inclusive spaces for creative work. 160 people from Poland and Norway applied to participate in the project. From these, 12 artistic people were selected to take part in residency stays in 2023 in Wrocław and Hvitsten.
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 presentation at the BWA Wrocław Główny Gallery is well described in a sentence: everything most important happened outside the space of this exhibition. – explains Agata Ciastoń, exhibition curator. Ciastoń accompanied the adaptation and creative process of five Norwegian artists who have visited Wrocław in recent months: Kine Michelle Bruniera, Lill Yildiz Yalcin, Aliona Pazdniakova, Yachi Shian-Yuan Yang, Ingrid Frivold.
The exhibition, which will be on view at BWA Wrocław Główny Gallery from 10th November, is a multi-voice story about this intense time, different for each of the participants. The works on view include photographs, sculptural objects, as well as paintings, sound and video works. The five visiting artists from Norway will be joined in the exhibition by one who made the reverse journey and travelled from Wrocław to the small Norwegian town of Hvitsten for four weeks. She is a Ukrainian-born graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kiev and Wrocław visual artist Viktoriia Tofan.
The exhibition opening will take place on November 10 at 6 p.m. in the BWA Wrocław Główny Gallery located on the mezzanine of the Wrocław Central Railway Station (105 Piłsudskiego Street). Admission is and visiting the exhibition is free. The exposition will be open until the end of 2023 – the program of curatorial tours and accompanying events will be announced soon. Today, we also invite you to a pre-premiere guided tour of the exhibition by the curator and artists, which will take place on November 10 at 12:00. If you would like to participate, please let us know in a message to the e-mail address (airwro@instytutkultury.pl).
Whose voices are being heard?
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
Organizer: Wrocław Institute of Culture Co-organizer: BWA Wrocław Galleries of Contemporary Art
Partners: Hvitsten Salong, Safemuse
Vernissage: 10 November, 6 p.m. at BWA Wrocław Główny Gallery (Mezzanine at Wrocław Central Railway Station), 105 Piłsudskiego St., Wrocław.
Facebook event: HERE
„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.
