Image Credit: Marta Janik - Collage
🔸🔹🔸UPCOMING EXHIBITION: MIGRACJE/MIGRATION🔸🔹🔸
Less than two weeks to go!!!!
Running from: July 29 - August 7, 2022
Venues: 54th Vintage Week and the Arts Festival (Birr Vintage Week & Arts Festival) in Birr, Ireland AND Praga Cultural Center in Praga-Północ in Warsaw.
I am so excited to take part in this fantastic exhibition on the timely topic of Migration. This exhibition is curated by the one and only Marta Janik.
The works will be presented during the 54th Vintage Week and the Arts Festival (Birr Vintage Week & Arts Festival) in Birr, Ireland, on July 29 - August 7, 2022, and simultaneously at the Praga Cultural Center in Praga-Północ in Warsaw. Both exhibitions will be outdoor in the open air.
Made possible by: Caroline Conway and the Birr Vintage Week & Arts Festival.
Supported by: Arts Council Ireland, CreativeIrl, Offaly County Council and the Irish Embassy in Poland (Zielono mi. Ambasada Irlandii w Polsce)
TO CHECK OUT THE PARTICIPATING ARTISTS AND TO READ MARTA'S WONDERFUL STATEMENT JUST LOOK BELOW.
Curator: Marta Janik
Artists:
Lou Beach (USA) | Jerome Bertrand (Kanada/Canada) | Yuliia Fareniuk (Ukraina/Ukraine)
Maria Filek (Polska/Poland)| Una Gildea (Irlandia/Ireland) | Domenico Goi (Włochy/Italy)
Anthony D. Kelly (Irlandia/Ireland) | Denis Kollasch (Niemcy/Germany) | Sherry Parker (USA)
Silvio Severino (Brazylia/Brazil) | Maryna Siliakova (Ukraina/Ukraine) | Steve Tierney (Australia) | Tanja Ulbrich (Hiszpania/Spain)
"Since February 24, the eyes of the whole world have been turned towards Ukraine, which was brutally attacked by Russia on that date. The UN Refugee Agency reported in early May that more than 6 million Ukrainian citizens have already fled their homeland to other countries, attempting to escape from the war.
The history of the world is the history of migration; and this is a phenomenon which increasingly affects each of us, in almost every corner of the Earth. People migrate for many reasons, some in search of peace and security, and others to earn more money and live better lives.
Often individuals and families are forced to move due to political and economic pressures and instability, and unfortunately as we see more often these days, a deteriorating climate.
Others simply go on the road because they are seeking out themselves and their place on this earth.
Nor is migration a uniquely human phenomenon, as it can be found throughout nature in the plant and animal kingdoms. Some birds can travel up to ten thousand kilometers at once, and a single dandelion seed will be carried on the wind for several kilometers! All in service of survival, exploration, and a better life.
The topic of migration is as broad as it is interesting, and it touches every living being; this surely encourages a timely investigation and reflection.
Collage is a process of fragmentation and recombination, pieces are seperated from their original images, finding their way from different places to make up something new and beautiful. In this way Collage is both an apt technique and an accurate metaphor for the experience of migration.
When we think in this way we realize that through migratory processes our countries and communities themselves are constantly evolving Collages of experience.
If we dare to look deeply enough we realise that we are each a Collage of experience. For those of us who live with migrants, and those of us who have migrated – either geographically or within our imaginations. We rise to new problems, and new challenges. We learn, we grow, we ask questions. „What does it mean to be at home?”, „What does it mean to be a stranger?”, „What does the word "homeland" mean?”.
Random elements appear in our lives from which we build meanings. Like in a collage. And from here it is only a step to the migration that each of us takes after all. Migrating inside ourselves. This is a one-of-a-kind, most personal journey.
As part of this project we invited an artist from Ukraine (Yuliia Fareniuk, a member of Kyiv Collage Collective), a war refugee, to come to Birr for the duration of the festival, and who will conduct workshops with the towns residents, joining with the people of the town and sharing the experience of creating a collage mural with them somewhere in the town environment."
For more of Marta Janik's amazing work blast off to: www.planetmarta.com
For the line up at this years Birr Vintage and Arts Festival visit: https://www.birrvintageweek.com/programme
For more from the amazing venue in Warsaw check out: Pałacyk Konopackiego
