Artistic Residency – 2025 Edition

Aliaksandr Danilkin was born in 1996 in Homiel, Belarus. Between 2012 and 2020, he studied painting at the State College of Fine Arts and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Minsk. During his studies, he opposed the censorship imposed by the academy, and after the 2020 presidential elections, he actively participated in protests, expressing opposition to the dictatorship. He was expelled from the academy for his opposition activity and forced to flee his homeland. Since then, he has used art as a form of protest, exploring contemporary political issues through the lens of Belarusian history and culture.

He currently lives and works in Wrocław, where he is completing his diploma project at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts. He collaborates with the Barak Kultury Foundation in Poznań, producing numerous solo and group exhibitions.

“During the residency, I want to create a series of large-format paintings as a continuation of my previous artistic explorations. Their aesthetics and form will reference Belarusian folk art, particularly the painted wall tapestries known as malyavanka. When Belarusian villages were burned and looted during wars, destroying most valuable examples of folk art, painted tapestries served as a medium for reconstructing a visual library of Belarusian folklore and preserving long-standing traditions from being forgotten. They became a popular way to decorate houses rebuilt after the war, where interior decoration was otherwise lacking.
I see potential in using the malyavanka formula outside the context of Belarus and creating a narrative based on the history of Krzyżowa and its role in resisting totalitarianism. I also plan to take advantage of all the creative opportunities offered by the space in Krzyżowa and make thematically related ceramic objects.”

https://www.instagram.com/aliaksandrdanilkin/

Adam Rzepecki

Performer, sculptor, installation artist, photographer, painter, filmmaker, curator. He studied art history at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

In 1979, he founded Łódź Kaliska, a group whose unconventional activities in Polish art in the 1980s transformed its face. In the first half of the 1980s, he co-created Kultura Zrzuty (“Culture of Rejection”), a nationwide alternative movement of young artists that proposed a “third way” in the then bipolar socio-political reality. Between 1978 and 1981, he ran the Jaszczurowa Photography Gallery in Kraków.
Since 2022, he has been active in the Supergroup UNDERGROUND KRAKOWSKI, which he co-founded together with Jerzy Kosałka, Zbigniew Libera, and Piotr Lutyński. Recently, he has also been composing music and creating sound installations.

“TIME plays a very important role in Krzyżowa. When staying here, it is impossible to avoid thinking about TIME — the past, historical time and the present.

TIMES overlap, changing the perspective of seeing, understanding, and evaluating.

Past and present time will also appear in a large painting/panorama of the sky visible in Krzyżowa, which I plan to paint during the residency. It will be a painting of the starry morning sky.

Some time ago, I realized that the starlight reaching us from the distant Universe also arrives during the sunny day. It is the Sun that prevents me from “seeing” the stars. A mobile app came to my aid, allowing me to see them even during the day.

Essentially, there will be two overlapping images (like TIMES in Krzyżowa), because the first one will be painted over (though not completely) by the second. The first will depict the sky over Krzyżowa as it looked in February 2025. The second will be the sky of October, observed by me during the residency.

I am also considering — by observing the night sky and using the app during the day — painting a “diary” of the starry sky over Krzyżowa throughout the residency, perhaps even day by day.”

https://www.instagram.com/pan_rzepecki/