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12/1/2012

Two exhibitions

Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery, Krakow

Kinga Araya
Walking with Kinga

Curator: Krzysztof Siatka
Co-ordinator: Karolina Więckowska

Kinga Araya’s project Walking with Kinga is based on the concept of walking and talking, which the artist has been developing over the years. The result is a multicultural activity which encompasses places in Italy, Poland and Hungary with links to the history of Saint Kinga as well as the artist herself. During her preparation for the exhibition over the period of a year and a half, the artist has talked with academics and people from different professions and different social classes, including men of the cloth. She engaged in discourse in various languages with people from culturally diverse places. In the process, she collected a record of local worship and tradition.

In her work Araya, an artist and art historian, combines the academic aspect of the project with visual arts such as activities in public space, multimedia presentations, video and audio recordings as well as sculptures and installations. The artist’s approach is interdisciplinary; theory and practice, life and art intermingle and are deeply rooted in each other.

The artist used as the starting point the story of her patron saint – Saint Kinga. She collected evidence of the continuing worship of the saint, visiting places related to her story and her cult. She perceives Saint Kinga as a remarkable woman, a princess, a migrant and the initiator of cultural, political and economic changes. In her art, Araya reflects on the link between the circumstances of the Hungarian princess with her own story – that of a Polish woman, an immigrant, someone who faced the challenge of living in foreign countries.

Kinga Araya critically reflects on aspects of hybrid identity, on multicultural suspension, on constant moving from one place to another, on emigration; and especially on the lack of a tangible motherland. The artist examines to what extent the necessity to function in a foreign language creates an obstacle to communication. The exhibition represents a critical autobiography of Kinga Araya – visual, spoken and written in English, Polish, Italian and Hungarian.

Kinga Araya is a citizen of both Canada and Poland. She lives and works in Rome in Italy. She studied at Ottawa University, York University in Toronto and Concordia University in Montreal, where she was awarded a PhD for her thesis entitled Walking in the City: The Motif of Exile in Performances by Krzysztof Wodiczko and Adrian Piper. Currently, she is writing a book entitled The Post-exilic Condition: the Poetics and Politics of Walking.

Kinga Araya has received numerous awards and stipends, such as: Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canadian Embassy in Warsaw, 2002), Renata Hornstein Graduate Fellowship in Recognition of Superior Academic Achievement (Concordia University, 2003), Recherche et création: Bourse “B” (Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, 2005), Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2006), Postdoctoral and Artistic Fellowship (ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, 2007).

The key questions in Araya’s research are migration, travel and return. She analyses the condition of an individual disconnected from their roots, who attempts to adapt in spite of communicating in a foreign language. The artist usually makes the focus of her attention an individual who, as a result of the context, on the one hand, has benefited, but, on the other, has been handicapped. In her performances, Araya evokes the symbolism of prosthetics with which she confronts herself as a participant in a performance, but she also draws general implications – at times, relevant for larger social groups.

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Wojciech Gilewicz
Studio

Curator: Beata Nowacka-Kardzis
Collaboration: Karolina Vysata
Consultation: Piotr Stasiowski

Wojciech Gilewicz’s exhibition Studio combines, in a new format, a gallery presentation of contemporary art with innovative educational techniques. The project carried out in Krakow’s Bunkier Sztuki Gallery is a continuation and extension of the exhibition Sale shown at the BWA Awangarda Gallery in Wrocław, Poland in April 2011.

Gilewicz was inspired by the Wrocław project, particularly by the process involved in the exhibition formula based on constant transformation within the exhibition space. The project will present paintings (including LTZSP, 2009-2011), video projections (such as In Practice, 2009; Bat Yam, 2008; Ivano-Frankivsk, 2007) and paintings created as the exhibition unfolds. The constant presence of the artist himself in the exhibition space provides visitors with direct contact with the artist, enabling them to take an active part in the creative process, while enhancing their perception and obliging them to reflect on the contemporary art scene.

The exhibition will dovetail with an extensive educational program, which will encourage visitors to spend time in the gallery space. The programme poses a number of questions about the interpretation of contemporary art, particularly painting. Workshops for children and teenagers with the participation of the artist are also planned to coincide with the exhibition, as well as a meeting with the artist tailor-made for the older school-age group and students. A number of educational materials will also be published. The exhibition will also be accompanied by a Polish-English catalogue and a film produced by pleple.tv (http://vimeo.com/33166757).

Wojciech Gilewicz (born in 1974 in Biłgoraj). Lives and works in Warsaw and New York. He is a painter, photographer and video and installation artist. In his works – usually poised at the point where all these disciplines meet – Gilewicz takes up the question of the blurring of the boundaries between reality and its depiction in art. The leitmotif of Wojciech Gilewicz’s art is the desire to demonstrate how relative and changeable our perception of the surrounding world is and how fluid the boundaries between reality and its artistic representation can be.

The artist’s work invites reflection on the mechanisms governing our perception and on the cultural determinants of the way we see things (www.gilewicz.net).

Image: Kinga Araya, Salty Walk, 2011, phot. Rafał Sosin

Press contact:
Martyna Chołys cholys@bunkier.art.pl

Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art
pl. Szczepański 3a, Krakow, Poland
Tue–Sun 11 am–6 pm

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