Tagged: solidarity

Grafting Solidarities – From the Factories to the Fields

Matter of Art Biennial 2024, Prague, June 14 – September 29, 2024

Six years ago, the Czech section of the Tranzit network launched a new art biennial in Prague titled Matter of Art, currently in its third edition. In contemporary times, nearly every major city hosts biennials to foster local cultural vitality, generate tourism, and enhance the city’s international perception and influence. Each new initiative sparks inquiries into its objectives, content, and audience, at home and globally. This constant self-reflection is especially crucial for biennials in East Central Europe—such as the Biennale Warszawa, Kyiv Biennial, OFF-Biennale Budapest, and Survival … Read more

Practicing Solidarity in Slovakia: The Story of Kunsthalle Bratislava

Since the beginning of its mandate, the newly elected (2023) Slovak government has been spreading discriminatory, homophobic, and xenophobic narratives, and proposing new policies, usually without any public debate or negotiations with the professional public. The new Minister of Culture is Martina Šimkovičová from the Slovak National Party (SNS), who formerly worked at the private television station Markíza (from which she was fired after her hateful comments against refugees on social media in 2015).(Tomáš Kyseľ, “Z Markízy ju vyhodili, Pellegrini s ňou mal problém a médiám sa už teraz vyhráža. Kto je Martina Šimkovičová,” Aktuality.sk, October 17, 2023, https://www.aktuality.sk/clanok/yc6re50/z-markizy-ju-vyhodili-pellegrini-s-nou-mal-problem-a-mediam-sa-uz-teraz-vyhraza-kto-je-martina-simkovicova/Read more

Roundtable on Art and Solidarity

The following roundtable was convened online on November 18, 2022, in conjunction with ARTMargins Online’s current special issue on Art and Solidarity. AMO’s editorial collective invited a panel of East European artists, theorists, and curators (Suzana Milevska, Olga Kopenkina, Dmitry Vilensky, Rena Raedle and Vladan Jeremic) who all have consistently engaged with the dilemmas of defining and practicing artistic solidarity. We asked participants to examine the forms and interpretations of solidarity they find the most effective, why expressions of international solidarity often fail, and what lessons the legacy of socialist internationalism may have for us today.

The online conversation moderated … Read more

“Situated Solidarity”: A New Curatorial Model for the European Nomadic Biennial?

The fourteenth edition of the nomadic European biennial Manifesta took place in Prishtina, Kosovo, from July 22 to October 30, 2022. The biennial included 25 exhibition venues in an urban parcours throughout the city, ranging from (dilapidated) historic monuments and institutions to public squares, abandoned buildings, and unused or unexpected urban spaces. Four of these venues have been declared “major pillars,” namely the Grand Hotel Prishtina, The Center for Narrative Practices (a former library), an abandoned brick factory on the outskirts of the city, and the so-called Green Corridor, an unused train track that has been transformed into a walking … Read more

Blue and red distorted forms with black text that reads attention air raid sirens in Berlin

“I Refuse to Accept This State of Affairs”: An Interview with the International Coalition of Cultural Workers Against the War in Ukraine

While Russia aggressively wages a major war in Ukraine, how can contemporary art help launch an antiwar movement worldwide? At a time when art workers in the post-Soviet region are more ethnically divided than ever, the International Coalition of Cultural Workers Against the War in Ukraine demonstrates a unique ability to unite around a platform for promoting antiwar and anti-colonial messages. Initially intended as an alternative Belarusian pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale, this digital platform quickly evolved to include and showcase antiwar artwork from a broad spectrum of countries including Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Germany, … Read more

Special Issue: Art and Solidarity

Introduction to the Special Issue 

The articles and interviews contained in this ARTMargins Online Special Issue address a wide range of approaches to artistic solidarity, some motivated explicitly by historical precedents and others by specific conditions of the present. They explore artistic projects, online platforms, curatorial approaches, and activist stances, presenting a diverse array of perspectives on what it can mean to stand with each other, even when we are apart—sharing common strategies and common visions, in search of a common future.

The special issue brings together voices from throughout the artworld to explore the ways artists, cultural workers, and Read more