Voices From The Center

The following podcast took place on October 30, 2011, on the occasion of the exhibition Voices from the Center at threewalls gallery in Chicago, October 28 – December 10, 2011. The exhibition is an extension of a series of interviews with those living in Eastern Europe about life during and after communism by artist and curator Janeil Engelstad, beginning in 2006. This multi-tiered project takes the form of an interactive web platform (www.voicesfromthecenter.net), as well as public events. This exhibition, the first iteration in the United States, gathers the work of Engelstad and artists Grafixpol (Poland), Oto Hudec (Slovakia/Portugal), Magda Stanová (Slovakia), Miklós Surányi (Hungary), Matej Vakula (Slovakia), and Tehnica Schweiz (Hungary). Their works respond to the original interviews, as well as impart the artists’ own reflections on the imprint of communism in their respective countries. With the exception of Gergely László and Péter Rákos of the collaborative Technica Schweiz, and Kasia Worpus-Wronska of the design team Grafixpol, this interview, conducted by Susan Snodgrass, includes Engelstad and the artists of the exhibition.

Special thanks to Adam Garcia for his assistance with the audio files.
Photo: Grafixpol Kaleidoscope, Off-set poster Courtesy threewalls gallery, Chicago

Susan Snodgrass

Susan Snodgrass is a Chicago-based critic and coeditor of ARTMargins Online. Much of her writing is devoted to alternative models of critical practice and artmaking, whether exploring new genres of public art or contemporary art in former Eastern Europe. She is a 2018 recipient of a Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for her blog, In/Site: Reflections on the Art of Place, which explores art, architecture and urbanism, and a finalist for the 2019 Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation Arts Journalist Award. She has written for both print and online publications for over 30 years, most notably for Art in America for which she was a Corresponding Editor, as well as Artforum, Textile: Cloth and Culture and THE SEEN. Her book Inside the Matrix: The Radical Designs of Ken Isaacs was published by Half Letter Press in 2019.