OPEN CALL – 5th Biennial of Artistic Textile in Poznan

OPEN CALL – 5th Biennial of Artistic Textile in Poznan

The Jak Malowana Foundation invites you to take part in an exhibition of contemporary artistic textiles. The slogan of this year’s edition is JOURNEY TO INVISIBILITY.

Regulations and application form available at www.btapoznan.pl

Application period: July 1, 2024 – April 6, 2025

Announcement of results: till May 30, 2025

Works to be delivered in September 2025 (details to be announced soon)

The work should be created within the last 5 years, should not exceed dimensions of 3x3x3 m and should not weigh more than 15 kg including packaging.

An application for the 5th BAT should include:

– completed application form (separate for each creation submitted)

– maximum 4 photos of one creation, saved in JPG format and not exceeding 3 MB, sent to btapoznan@gmail.com

5th Biennial of Artistic Textile:

Exhibition venue: Słodownia +1 Gallery, Stary Browar in Poznan

Exhibition date: October 2025 (details to be announced soon)

Organizer: Jak Malowana Foundation

Partners: Stary Browar, Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts Poznan, Nowa UAP Foundation, UAP Municipal Galleries, Galeria Jak, Wytwórnia Bakcyl

Curator of the Journey to Invisibility exhibition: Anna Maria Brandys

BAT main curator: Karolina Grzeszczuk

BAT coordinator: Anna Maria Brandys

Co-financed by the City of Poznan #poznańsupports

Invitation to implement and submit work:

Journey to invisibility, or the path to…

Well, to what? Artist, are you ready to find a space within yourself in which what is transparent becomes precious, or do you rather feel it as the disappearance of the visible, and therefore anti-value?

As part of the 5th Biennial of Artistic Textile in Poznan, we will look at various manifestations of invisibility – with emphasis on the process of achieving this state. We invite interested artists – regardless of education and without age limits – to take part in an open call, during which you can go on a creative journey through the vastness of transparency.

Invisibility itself can be both a disadvantage and an advantage, the way of interpretation depends on the perspective. Traveling there can provide shelter – blending in with the crowd is most often extremely desirable for a person with refugee experience.

There is also harmful invisibility. Its example includes: struggling with the everyday life of people with disabilities and their caregivers. Their constant fight for dignity…

The death of non-human beings, animals on farms or plants on plantations, whose utilitarian nature towards us, who are superior and stronger, determines their survival, is also too little visible.

Do we sufficiently notice the phenomenon of empty buildings – abandoned “houses that – as the saying goes – should not be empty[1]”? In contrast to the pathological developer, who, although often painfully visible and eye-searing with ugliness, is still invisible in the regulations, and therefore unpunished…

The topic of the 5th BAT also opens us to the broad context of women’s invisibility, which is a broad set of issues. It concerns, for example, the insufficient visibility of women in the group of people in the homeless crisis. It ranges from unequal design of objects, through unpaid care work, to victim blaming and other phenomena the scale of which is terrifying.

The journey… may be an attempt to draw attention to the fact that in aging societies, metrics, clocks or calendars become sinister and stigmatizing. In the case of transience, however, we are dealing with a journey in one direction, inevitably heading towards death. The latter – repressed, hidden in hospital rooms or corridors – ceases to be an integral part of existence, and at the same time it does not disappear at all.

Invisibility can also be studied through the prism of artistic work, asking where and why do artists disappear after completing formal education, and what is their life like outside the mainstream art circuit?

There is also the phenomenon of physical invisibility, related to the lack of reflected light. The question about the process of reaching or leaving invisibility is also a question about everything that is included in the concept of shadow, which is an inherent element of visibility.

The motto of this year’s Biennial is a request to you to try to capture the fleeting moment when the line between being perceived and being invisible becomes blurred.

While writing this text, I wonder how long such a journey takes. In my own creative work, I focus on childhood and childishness. We play different social roles, but each of us was once a child, an immature person. Often – due to the age – also invisible. Fortunately, the times when children and fish have no voice are over, but unfortunately not everywhere and to varying degrees. We still have a lot to do to recognize the subjectivity of Others, including children, and their right to self-determination. A symbolic Pandora’s box opens here, from which, as under posts on the Internet, a lot of horror, pain and hatred can pour out, but it seems to me that turning away from difficult feelings will not make it easier for us to have a mature look at the world in which there is room for diversity with the entire spectrum of its shades, fractions and orientations…

For you, does invisibility mean freedom from the often judgmental gaze, or a privilege? Or maybe ignoring and belittling the needs of the weaker, whose voices of opposition do not reach the ears or consciousness of the general public? Invisibility may also appear as a means of unfettered freedom, perhaps even impunity, or it may be an act of flight, concealment, and inaction that annihilates responsibility. The innocent dream of an invisibility cloak comes true all around in a way that even unrestrained imagination cannot predict.

Money or technology will not replace integration, culture or public debate, so – in response to the open call – illustrate what the journey to invisibility means to you, bringing out the values ​​hidden in the field of non-seeing. Let’s try to present them during the competition exhibition of the 5th edition of the Artistic Textile Biennial, which will take place in 2025 in Słodownia 1+ in Stary Browar in Poznan.

Join us!

Anna Maria Brandys

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[1] A slogan from squatters’ T-shirts, which I saw for the first time at Hulajpol in Wrocław. I tried to establish authorship, but no one admits it…