Us
Project leader
KATARZYNA KOZYRA FOUNDATION – established in June 2012 in Warsaw. The main goal of the Foundation is to take part in improving local and interregional development through informing about, cultivating and consolidating society’s cultural needs. We reach our goals through exhibiting, educating, archiving, and publishing. The main focus of the Foundation is to support women in their activities in the field of culture, while undertaking projects having great impact on art and society. We aim to create international partnerships and work towards strengthening relations between female artists in Central and Eastern Europe, to hold a dialog, create relations, and break stereotypes skewing the way of thinking about art by documenting and supporting female artists. The Foundation stands for acting in public interest with regard to modern art and culture; creating opportunities for artistic and educating and spreading the knowledge on modern art and culture as well as supporting and promoting Katarzyna Kozyra’s artistic activity. We aim to raise awareness and advocate the national heritage as well as promote scientific and artistic areas of interest with regard to modern culture and art in Poland, and abroad.
Albania, Kosovo, Serbia and V4 countries (2022) – Project coordinators: Bogna Stefańska, Adela Demetja, Renea Begolli, Dejan Vasić, Daniela Šiandorová, Piotr Sikora, Róna Kopeczky, Lucia Kvočáková; Project Managers: Paulina Bijoch, Ewa Mielczarek
Belarus & Ukraine (2022) – Project Curator: Asia Tsisar; Project Manager: Magdalena Majewska
Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland & Slovakia (2021) – Project Curator: Agata Cieślak in collaboration with Rona Kopecki, Lucia Kvočáková, Piotr Sikora; Project Manager: Magdalena Majewska
Project partners
Tirana Art Lab – Center for Contemporary Art is one of Albania’s leading contemporary independent art institutions. Founded as a non-profit organization, on the initiative of Adela Demetja in 2010, TAL aims at promoting emerging artists and contemporary art from Albania as well as from Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe. The center is process and research oriented. Through different events like residencies, exhibitions, workshops, performances, lectures and talks, as well as publications, TAL has managed to create a space for emergent critical and reflective thoughts. The center initiates and supports new productions by national and international artists, and projects critically engaged with artistic, cultural and social issues of transitional and contemporary societies. Throughout the years, TAL has grown into a contemporary art centre, engaged in a wide range of activities and collaborations with other art institutions, museums, and academic structures in Albania, the South Eastern Europe Region and the international landscape.
Ambasada Kultury – the initiative of Belarusian culture workers and activists with a goal of supporting and developing connections within and outside Belarusian cultural community, promoting cooperation and collaboration of artists and activists from different fields of culture. Based in Vilnius (LT), Berlin (DE).
Project coordination: Anna Chistoserdova, Valentina Kiselyova
Goethe Institut e.V. – the cultural institute of the Federal Republic of Germany with a global reach. We promote knowledge of the German language abroad and foster international cultural cooperation. We convey a comprehensive image of Germany by providing information about cultural, social and political life in our nation. Our cultural and educational programmes encourage intercultural dialogue and enable cultural involvement. They strengthen the development of structures in civil society and foster worldwide mobility. The Goethe-Institut is represented by 157 institutes in 97 countries around the world.
Project coordination: Piotr Sikora
Easttopics is a non-profit initiative launched in 2013, led by young art professionals based in Hungary and Serbia and dedicated to the promotion of the Eastern European contemporary art field. Working as a think tank for the Eastern European art communities, Easttopics is a genuinely interdisciplinary cooperative which goal is to draw the Eastern contemporary art field and the international art scene closer to each other. This cross-border project takes form as an expanding on-line website and database since 2015, as well as an exhibition space and library since 2019 focusing on the following countries: Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Northern Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. Easttopics aims at mapping and providing more visibility to protagonists of the Eastern European art life, should they be artists, art professionals, institutions, events or publications. It also wishes to act as a dynamic platform fostering connections, exchanges, community building, and cooperation for both practice-based and research-based projects on a local, regional, and international level.
Project coordination: Rona Kopecki
BJÖRNSONOVA is a collective linking the activities and projects of its members focused on cooperation in the field of culture operating on the Slovak-Czech and the international contemporary art scene, expanding its activities by inviting guests to collaborations in order to respond to the current issues affecting contemporaneity and its context. The collective consists of four members, artists Lucie Mičíková, Nik Timková, Zuzana Žabková, and art historian and curator Lucia Kvočáková, connecting their own artistic researches and practices. It is named after Street Björnsonova 2 in Bratislava, a place where was created a flat gallery in 2012 and where the part of the collective invited various guests to exhibitions and events. A place where the strings of all four members have been linked at certain moments.
Project coordination: Lucia Kvočáková
Artsvit Gallery – opened in Dnipro in 2013, is engaged in the representation of contemporary Ukrainian art through exhibitions, research art projects, educational programs for adults and children. Since 2019, it has launched a regular residency program for artists, curators, performers, and researchers. A distinctive feature of the Artsvit Gallery is a collection of Ukrainian art from the post-war period to the present. Today, the collection becomes the basis for creating a research platform. The focus of our work is based on analysis and critical understanding of the environment and society through artistic and curatorial practices.
Project coordination: Iryna Polikarchuk
Project funders
Secondary Archive 2021: V4 (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia):
Visegrad Fund – the Fund is an international donor organization, established in 2000 by the governments of the Visegrad Group countries—Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia to promote regional cooperation in the Visegrad region (V4) as well as between the V4 region and other countries, especially in the Western Balkans and Eastern Partnership regions. The Fund does so by awarding €8 million through grants, scholarships and artist residencies provided annually by equal contributions of all the V4 countries. Other donor countries (Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States) have provided another €10 million through various grant schemes run by the Fund since 2012.
Secondary Archive 2022: Ukraine and Belarus:
House of Europe is an EU-funded programme fostering professional and creative exchange between Ukrainians and their colleagues in EU countries and the UK. The programme focuses on culture and creative industries, education, health, social entrepreneurship, media, and youth.
This encompasses 20+ separate programme lines enabling to go for conferences, professional events, internships, and networking in the EU and the UK, or to enrol in study tours, residencies, trainings, and other forms of support. House of Europe funds cultural coproductions and cooperations between Ukrainian organisations and their counterparts in the EU and the UK, along with the development of cultural infrastructure and artistic concepts for youth in Ukraine. Finally, the programme offers various youth camps and an intra-Ukrainian university exchange.
Special thanks to the Ecodome NGO for their support with the translation of the statements of Belarusian artists.
Special thanks to kalektar.org – a research platform on Belarusian contemporary art for providing visual and text materials for the Belarusian part of the Secondary Archive.
Special thanks to Polish Institute Prague for their support with translations of statements written by Alžběta Bačíková, Ester Krumbachová, Zorka Ságlová, Isabela Grosseová and Alma Lily Reiner.
Special thanks to Zachęta – National Gallery of Art for the support of the project.
Design by Marcel Kaczmarek and development by 8080.studio.