CEC Artslink, Art Prospect Network Residency with host organization Open Place Interdisciplinary Platform in cooperation with Arsenal Gallery | Bialystok, Poland | 2023
Photo descriptions: Images of community engagement artistic activities as part of the residency program. This includes a “Linocut Memoryscapes” Workshop with members of the local Bialystok communities across Polish, Ukrainian, and other backgrounds as well as workshops with the Ukrainian and Romani community from Jard Social Welfare Center in Wasilikow, with activities conducted both on site at Jard and an excursion to Arsenal Gallery. Learn more about the Linocut Workshops here
A fruitful month long collaboration with American artist Joana Potle and the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok, Poland, which took place within the program of the artistic residencies of the platform of interdisciplinary practices Open Place (host organization) alongside Yulia Kostereva supported by CEC ArtsLink.
Joanna's goal during her residency was to collaborate with the local communities of Białystok and surrounding areas. Joana conducted 6 workshops, 5 of which for the families of Ukrainians and Roma living in the Jard Social Protection Center in Waslików. Also while visiting the Radical Parenthood exhibition at the Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok, Joanna offered a methodology of intuitive introduction to artworks and a methodology of interpretation of artworks.
As Joanna’s practice includes exploring the concept of Memoryscapes, during the workshops we listened and discussed together, paying attention to the sensory experience as well as its visualisation. We compared our imagination and our memories by visualizing, for example, the journey of the trip between Waslików and Białystok, then visualizing the memories of it, and compared our experiences.
Joanna also conducted a linocut workshop, for a multicultural group, using simple printing equipment at the Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok, which enabled participants to print on various types of paper and fabric. Reflecting on the pleasant moments of interaction with the shared photographs.
Photography by Joanna Potle and Yulia Kostereva
Linocuts by Joanna, completed at Arsenal Gallery while in residence.
Participatory artistic series done with local and multicultural communities members in Bialystok and Wasilikow, Poland.
Work above: Memoryscapes co-created by Ukrainian and Romani children depicting what each imagined the road from Waliskow to Bialystok would be like, highlighting the senses across what they think it will look, feel, smell, and taste like ahead of organized visit to Arsenal Gallery
Work above: Memoryscapes co-created by Ukrainian and Romani children depicting what they remember of the road from Waliskow to Bialystok would be like, highlighting the senses across what they think it will look, feel, smell, and taste like.
A participatory visual alphabet of Ukrainian, co-created by Ukrainian and Romani children learning the language and residing in Wasilikow.
With the prompt of a given letter of the Ukrainian alphabet, Joanna and the children engaged in an artistic approach to language learning by identifying a word for each letter of the Ukrainian language that starts with a given letter. The stylistic approach and word choices had tremendous variation, with some children incorporating the letter into the drawing, others creating a realistic image while others drew abstract images.
