Meet the winning projects of Culture of Mobility 2024

A residency and exhibition at the gallery of the Icelandic Association of Graphic Artists in Reykjavik, a trip to the International Festival of Photography and Visual Arts in Portugal, a series of networking visits to institutions and artist-run estates foundations in New York –  these are just half of the projects that will be supported by the local Culture of Mobility grant fund! Check out the overseas initiatives of the winners and runners-up of this year’s call.

As representatives of cultural scene from Wrocław and Lower Silesia, you submitted a total of 21 applications in the call for proposals, which lasted from 5 to 26 February, sharing with us this year’s plans for the realisation of your foreign initiatives supporting the development of artistic careers and the promotion of our city and region. The submitted projects were exceptionally diverse and very well prepared in terms of content (applause for the numerous consultations!). As usual: the applications mostly concerned individual trips to a partner or inviting organisation (13) and group projects (3). There were also projects for networking trips (3 individual and 2 group). Of these, the committee selected 6 mobility proposals.

Whose trips are we supporting this year?

Agata Żychlińska will present her original paintings at an exhibition at The Grand Egyptian Museum during the second edition of the international Empower Her (Empower Her Art Forum). The event is organised by an Egyptian-international social enterprise dedicated to women’s art. The exhibition in Giza will present the work of women from 45 countries, and Agata’s paintings will be part of the representation of the Polish pavilion created with the curatorial collaboration of Alicja Pruchniewicz. It is worth mentioning that we, as the Wrocław Institute of Culture, are supporting mobility in this geographical direction for the first time.

Another individual trip is related to the continuation of architectural queries. Agata Gierko, PhD in architecture and urban planning, will go on a study visit to Haus Schlesien in Königswinter, Germany. The architect will investigate the landscape transformation practices of housing estates built in the interwar period in Wrocław. The aim of the research is to gain an insight into the original development of the housing estates through comparative cartographic research and to evaluate these solutions in light of contemporary urban challenges.

By the second half of September, Katerina Kouzmitcheva, who lives in Wrocław, will participate in the 34th edition of Encontros da Image – the International Festival of Photography and Visual Arts in Braga, Portugal. During the weekend innaugurating the event, the Belarusian photographer will open her solo exhibition My Hut Is On The Edge. In this project, she visualises traditional proverbs from different languages relating to avoidance and minding one’s own business through fictional scenarios.

We will also move to the north of Europe with Tomasz Dobiszewski and Anna Krukowska’s trip to Reykjavik. The pair of printmakers, at the invitation of the Icelandic Printmaking Association and Grafíksalurinn/IPA Gallery, will spend a two-week creative residency ending with an exhibition in July. The artistic project, entitled Spaces of Alienation, will be realised together with a group of artists from Krakow and will focus on ethnocentrism. On what, then? As the beneficiaries of Culture of Mobility explain in their application: “We want to allude to the attitude of a traveller who gets to know a new country with this ethnocentric eye, based on ideas formed in his own cultural circle.”

The second group trip around the realisation of the exhibition will be a team study visit by Zosia Reznik, Beata Rojek and Sonia Sobiech to a partner in Brussels, who, together with researcher Julia Laureau from the Catholic University of Leuven and local activists, will co-create an exhibition planned for 2025 with the working title ‘Women’s Rights and Democracy in Poland’. The aim of the August trip will be to identify the exhibition space and to map local action for the rights of people who can become pregnant, especially the issue of the availability of safe abortion taking into account different social contexts, and to make contact with existing support networks. The visit will also serve to discern the Brussels audience’s interest in emancipation movements in Poland and explore the communication needs of a transcultural project.

With the arrival of autumn, as it did last year, Culture of Mobility will be heading all the way from the Atlantic Ocean – to the USA. Kama Wróbel will take her networking trip to New York. She will visit important cultural institutions involved in the career development of artists and implementing a programme of support for the sector: Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation and New York Foundation for the Arts, Storn King Art Center, Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum. The aim of the trip is to broaden the participants’ own knowledge, learn about good professional practices and meet future partners who are ultimately to be invited to collaborate on educational projects for communities working in the cultural sector.

Congratulations everyone!