Invitation to participate in the artistic project of Krzysztof Wodiczko

Invitation to participate in the artistic project of Krzysztof Wodiczko

Arsenal Municipal Gallery and Estrada Poznańska would like to invite all those interested to take part in the project by Krzysztof Wodiczko, one of the most internationally acclaimed Polish artists, who will organize a public space event in Poznań.

All those interested in participation can meet us on Tuesday, 2nd of April, at 5:00 p.m. at the Arsenal Municipal Gallery. At the meeting, we will talk about planned activity and answer any questions you may have about the project.

We invite foreigners living in Poznań who would like to share anonymously their experience and opinions on life in Poznań. The artistic event will use a device specially designed to facilitate multicultural communication, allowing those whose voices often go unheard speak up in public space. The project participants will be people who have come to our city from other countries, represent different cultural traditions and whom the artist can help to share their experience with others.

If you are interested in taking part in Krzysztof Wodiczko’s project, contact us at j.stankiewicz@estrada.poznan.pl.
See you soon!
The team of the Arsenal Municipal Gallery and Estrada Poznańska.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Krzysztof Wodiczko makes art that addresses vital social and cultural issues of contemporary global civilisation.
For many years one of the central themes in his art has been working with persons excluded or various reasons from public space and the question of experiencing traumas. In the United States, he worked mainly with the homeless people and immigrants. The artist creates artefacts that he himself calls “cultural prostheses” intended to make people so far unseen and unheard become present in the public agora. The “alien staff” project realized in 1992 is an example of how an artefact created by the artist attracts the viewer’s attention and offers a possibility of a dialogue between individuals who would have not been able to interact otherwise. With the aid of the alien staff, immigrants could tell their stories, share their experiences and traumas with the inhabitants of the country they came to live in. A similar idea was behind the project carried out in 2018 in Weimar, involving the local monument of Goethe and Schiller. Elaborating on his concept of „monument therapy” i.e. using existing monuments for changing messages promoted in public space, Wodiczko created an interactive situation engaging both newcomers – immigrants from Syria and Weimar inhabitants. Krzysztof Wodiczko is one of the best known Polish artists enjoying worldwide artistic presence. He has received numerous awards, among them the Hiroshima Art Prize (1998), Kepes Arts Prize (2004) and the Katarzyna Kobro Award (2006). He was a lecturer at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris and the Cooper Union School of Art in New York. He was also Director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. At present he teaches at Harvard University. His works have been displayed in Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, Fundació Tapies in Barcelona, Whitney Museum of American Art and The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, the Fine Arts Museum in Łódź and also presented during Documenta 8, Kassel and at the 53 rd International Art Biennale in Venice and the Biennale of Sydney. Krzysztof Wodiczko’s art tackles vital social and cultural issues of today. The context for his art is the city understood as a space for public debate, investigating its historic memories and deciphering its contemporary messages. The artist analyses the condition of today’s democracy, considering its ability to accept strangers and take care for the underprivileged as the touchstone of its quality.
Wodiczko’s best known works are projections on monuments and architecture of many cities of the world, as well as objects he himself designs, such as “Homeless vehicle Project”, “Poliscar”, or “Alien Staff”.

Video materials about the artist presenting fragments of his works:
https://culture.pl/pl/wideo/bzik-kulturalny-krzysztof-wodiczko-wideo
https://ninateka.pl/film/krzysztof-wodiczko-przewodnik-po-sztuce

picture: Krzysztof Wodiczko Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. (1988) , via https://hirshhorn.si.edu