Prague, Warsaw, and Kiev

Residents: Melissa Aguilar (Colombia), Rosanna del Solar (Peru), Susanne Ewerlöf (Sweden), Joseph Gergel (US/Nigeria), Emma Hazen (US), Pedro Portellano (Spain/Germany), Mariana Rodríguez Iglesias (Argentina), and Alessandra Troncone (Italy)

Supported by the Center for Contemporary Arts; Prague, Izolyatsia, Kiev; and AIR Laboratory at the CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw

Building Capitals, Finding Capital: Developing Projects across Prague, Warsaw, and Kiev   

In a globalized art world, artists must continuously reinvent their practices while also acknowledging available resources and the structures that make them accessible. With CPR’s 2016 Eastern European program, we hope to rigorously examine this landscape of funding for the arts in three cities: Kiev, Warsaw and Prague. The cities themselves share historical and economic connections, as well as a Soviet past that reflects their contemporary experience of governance and capitalism. Each city is the capital of its respective nation, and as such each is a vital cultural player in the construction of a new paradigm joining the post-Soviet experience with an integrated and complex European project. Despite these connections, each city has dealt with extremely different circumstances through its development. From questions of industrial privatization to censorship, national concerns affect and influence the resources devoted to the arts, as well as the character and motivations of those who support the arts.
CPR’s 2016 Eastern European program seeks to equip curatorial residents with a unique form of knowledge about the participating cities. Where do artists look for funding? How diverse is support? How do limited resources connect or isolate art practitioners? Who makes art possible, and why? Equipped with answers to these questions rather than a more traditional familiarity with the artists and the art worlds of each of these cities, the curatorial residents will investigate the range of connections inherent to funding structures and patron networks. By visualizing an art world positioned around resources, residents will have the opportunity to identify advantages and disadvantages of the systems. Additionally, the project seeks to ask what benefits are inferred in patron’s support. In essence, the question becomes less about who buys art, and more about what does art buy?

Clemens Poole 

KIEV
Kiev offers a diverse and vibrant art scene—if you know where to look. With a scattered assortment of galleries ranging from official state enterprises to informal project and event spaces, the city boasts many formats for engaging Ukrainian contemporary art. As the nation experiences pivotal political and economic changes, funding for the arts has become increasingly limited. Artists and art institutions have nevertheless found inventive ways to activate the city. In addition to established spaces for exhibition, initiatives of the Kiev art scene often appear where least expected, creating an environment of fascinatingly rich and changing expressions.

WARSAW
Warsaw art scene is defined by art public art institutions and relatively young and very dynamic private galleries. This combination makes it a very vivid and interesting place where all the time new initiatives emerge, some of them to stay some to disappear or merge in something different. The city has three major art institutions focused on contemporary art, Warsaw central position is also set also by the Art Academy and many artists’ studios. Art market is not very strong locally that is why most of the commercial galleries focus on international curators, most of them moved to Warsaw from different Polish cities. However recently one could observe a new phenomenon – awave of anew independent art spaces, often artists’ run and self-funded. The change is slow but significant. Such projects were still lacking in the local art world which was relaying either on the institutional support or the art market. It is also important from the perspective of recent political situation, with the conservative government that contemporary artist will find independent places for exhibition and alternative models of creations. Not only of projects that may be politically charged but also of the works which are very experimental, ephemeral and non-collectible.

ABOUT FCCA, PRAGUE
The Foundation and Center for Contemporary Art’s (est. 1992) ranks among the longest operating independent art centers in the Czech Republic. It has created a unique position on the local cultural scene, notably through: the traditional grant program that supports independent artistsґ projects and institutions, the organization of exhibitions (Jeleni Gallery focusing mainly on young emerging artists, projects in public space), education and documentation (the biggest database of the Czech contemporary art Artlist.cz and library) and the international residential program for curators, artists and art theoreticians. The FCCA’s activities extend beyond the Czech Republic. In the past its partnership with institutions such as P.S.1, ISCP, Res Artis and Art in General means that the FCCA has played a fundamental role in the formation and development of Czech contemporary visual art scene.