Lisa Maria Baier – resident of the Grafikwerkstatt in Wrocław

This is the ninth year of artistic cooperation between Wrocław and Dresden! Thanks to the support of the Departments of Culture of the two neighbouring lands – Lower Silesia and Saxony – and the partners from the city’s cultural institutions, we are co-organising another edition of a residency exchange for artists connected with the graphic design community.

At the end of March and the beginning of April, for a month-long residency in Wrocław, we will host Lisa Maria Baier, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, a visual artist whose works have been exhibited in prestigious institutions such as the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, the German Hygiene Museum and Kunsthaus Dresden. In turn, the person who will go to one of the oldest and most important printmaking studios in Europe – the Grafikwerkstatt – will be announced in June, after an open competition for local female artists (the call for entries starts already on 5 May).

Who is the Dresden artist?

Lisa Maria Baier is a German visual artist, born in 1988 in Görlitz. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden (HfBK) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest (MKE). She lives and works in Dresden on a daily basis.

Her work is based on participatory practices – she involves third parties who, through interviews, surveys or collaboration, provide the materials that form the foundation of her documentary projects. Through these archives, the artist creates films and installations that explore the complex relationship between the individual and cultural heritage.

Baier’s works have been presented at prestigious institutions such as the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, the German Hygiene Museum and the Kunsthaus Dresden. The artist thoroughly explores the ambivalences, anxieties and doubts of the younger generation towards the cultural legacy, which is reflected in her films and spatial installations. Her work reveals an ongoing process of negotiating the meanings of images and motifs taken from personal archives, giving them new contexts and interpretations.

Residence in the City Gallery studio

In Wrocław, Lisa will focus on workshop work in the studios of the City Gallery on Ruska Street and in the Miedziorytnik House. Baier will also be a frequent guest at several studios of the Department of Artistic Graphics at the Wrocław Academy of Fine Arts. The result will be a series of graphics created with the help of artificial intelligence, fed by archival photographs and historical documents belonging to Polish refugees from the 1930s and 1940s and German refugees after 1945, which will take on a tangible form through the use of screen printing.

Lisa Maria Baier was selected by the City of Dresden. The residencies are organised by the cultural departments of the partner cities: Wrocław and Dresden. Exchange partners: Grafikwerkstatt in Dresden, Wrocław Institute of Culture, The Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, the City Gallery in Wrocław and Domek Miedziorytnika.