Resident artists selected for 2016 and 2017

Trzy małe ekrany multimedialne, na których wyświetlają się filmy.

fot. Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich

In the end of May, we finished the call for projects in another edition of the “Open Museum – Education in Action” artist-in-residence program. This time, the starting point for the works will be the most recent: post-1989 history of Polish Jews.

We would like to thank everyone who submitted their applications to us.

At the same time, we are pleased to announce that in 2016 and 2017, the following artists will carry out their projects within the artist-in-residence program:

Yael Vishnizki Levi (Israel/Poland), July 11–31, 2016

Levi studied at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (New York), the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (Jerusalem) and the Tel Aviv University. She was the initiator and curator of the Six Verbs Movement project carried out as part of the 20th edition of the International Theatre Festival "Theatrical Confrontations"in Lublin. She took part in the Vot Ken You Mach exhibition at the Wrocław Contemporary Museum. In her application to POLIN Museum, she proposed a work of film where the script will deal with an individual's struggle with ideology and regime, discuss Jewish immigration to Israel, and recall the period of post-1989 political transformation. The starting point for the project is the history of the artist's family, traces of which she recently came across in state archives. The project provides a special context for her own relocation from Israel to Poland.

Assaf Gruber (Israel), September 19 – October 9, 2016

Gruber lives and works in Berlin. He graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (ENSBA) in Paris and the Higher Institute of Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. In 2012, he was an artist-in-resident at Künstlerhaus Bethanien. He is also a scholarship winner of Berlin's Akademie der Künste. He presented his works at solo exhibitions at Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź and Eigen+ Art Lab in Berlin, as well as the Berlinale International Film Festival and the Festival of Art in Public Space – Open City in Lublin. Gruber wants to examine new migrant communities in contemporary Poland. He is particularly interested in Chinese and Vietnamese minorities who work in retail trade and settled down in Warsaw during the early 1990s.

Anna Konik (Poland), November 14 – December 4, 2016

Konik holds a PhD in fine arts (Faculty of Media and Stage Design of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw) and is a lecturer at the Intermedia Faculty of the University of Arts in Poznań. She was a visiting lecturer at the Bielefeld University, the Humboldt University of Berlin, and Sommerakademie in Salzburg. She was nominated for Deutsche Bank's "Views 2009" award and the Paszport Polityki (Polityka's Passport) award. She has presented her works in individual exhibitions in venues such as the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle (Warsaw), National Museum of Contemporary Art (Bucharest), Void Gallery (Derry), Atlas Sztuki (Łodź), and Max Libermann Haus (Berlin). The artist wants to make an attempt at recording the history and experiences of a community living in Dobrodzień, a town in the south of Poland which is inhabited by displaced person from Poland's historic Eastern Borderlands and the German minority, among others. She is both interested in traces of the town's former Jewish community and the contemporary, often derelict and decaying landscape of the place that serves as a testimony of the geopolitical and transformational changes in Poland.

Hagar Cygler (Israel/United States), January 16 – February 5, 2017

Cygler lives and works in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of the California Institute of the Arts and the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem. She also completed a curator course organized by the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv. She presented her works in collective exhibitions at the Ceramics Bienale (Tel Aviv) and in various venues, including the MoFA (Museum of Fine Arts Florida) and the Israeli Digital Art Center (Holon). The artist wants to consider national representations of the past by processing used objects bought at flea markets and in second hand shops. She will focus on artifacts connected with Jewish culture from the last three decades and research the collective and individual memory of the period.

Patrycja Orzechowska (Poland), February 20 – March 12, 2017

Orzechowska lives and works in Gdańsk. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk and is a PhD student at the Interdisciplinary PhD Studies at the University of Arts in Poznań. She has won several scholarships from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Pomorskie Province Assembly Head, and the Mayor of the City of Gdańsk. She has presented her works in Gdańska Galeria Miejska (Gdańsk), Platan Gallery (Budapest), Silesian Museum (Katowice), CSW Kronika (Bytom), BWA Wrocław, CSW Łaźnia, CSW Vilnius, and CSW Znaki Czasu (Toruń). The artist is interested in gaining a better understanding of the resources offered by the socially-created POLIN Museum collection.

The above-mentioned projects were selected by a jury comprising of:

Ewa Chomicka – Head of Adult Education
Joanna Fikus – Head of Exhibition Department
Jolanta Gumula – Deputy Director for Programmes
Agnieszka Pindera – Artist-in-Residence Specialist
Dr Renata Piątkowska – Collection Curator, Head of Collection Department
Zygmunt Stępiński – Deputy Director for Educational and Cultural Activities
Tamara Sztyma-Knasiecka – Curator of Exhibitions