We can view migration in terms of moving from rural to urban areas, from cultivated fields to forests, or changing orbit. It is always characterised by displacement, change of the environment and crossing a certain border, which often doesn’t actually exist. Dominika Kulczyńska touched upon the subject of travelling distances during her residency at Oficinas de Convento in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal, completed as part of AIR Wro in 2017. According to the artist, migration can be approached from many different perspectives, for example in the context of the birds in the city, including strictly protected and endangered species. In the spring of 2019, she continues this theme in the form of an exhibition and artistic action.
“Migratory Species” refers directly to the habits of the common house martin and its nest building techniques, which the artist reproduces herself. One of them will be displayed in the gallery space along with the documentation of the process. This way, the designer wishes to establish a certain “inter-species dialogue”. Since these birds make their nests from clay, the resulting object will de facto become an artistic installation. The exhibition will also feature vessels, whose shape and form are directly taken from or inspired by the shape of nests of migrating birds from our geographical area.
The exposition will be complemented by a photograph taken by the Wrocław artist in October 2015 on the Croatian-Hungarian border, during a volunteer trip to support groups of refugees there. The photo shows a close-up of the ground trampled by thousands of people every day in the area of the so-called “green mile”, i.e. the safety zone between countries, which these groups had to cross on foot.
The exhibition at the Tętno Gallery will be accompanied by workshops at the Studio Zakwas. The artist will invite the residents of Wrocław to join her and make nests, which they will then be able to take home and place them in a chosen point in the city. Through this action she will make a symbolic “gesture of inviting” the birds back to the cities.
“Migratory species” – the exhibition and workshops – are just a small part of the project carried out in collaboration with the team of ornithologists from the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences, in which the artist invites the viewer to take a closer look at the situation of the city birds in Wrocław.
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Exhibition opening: 29.03.2019, 20:00
Exhibition: 29.03-7.4.2019 (Monday-Friday: 11:00-18:00, Saturday: 11:00-18:00, Sunday: 11:30-15:30) – admission free
Workshops: 6.04.2019 – Studio Zakwas
