Kacper Szalecki, photography from series Olimpia’s Diary, 2016.
Participant artists: Bella Ćwir, Dom Mody Limanka, Szymon Dębowczyk, Raphael Domagała, Maja Chiara Faber, Vala Tomasz Foltyń, Karolina Jarzębak, Kacper Szalecki
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: On 8th of August at 7.00 pm the SEMI-PRESENT curatorial project initiated by Michal Sypien will be launched during the opening of the exhibition “Queer spaces of re-sis-tance” in OKO Cultural Melting Point, Admiraal de Ruijterweg 331. According to the results of research conducted by ILGA Europe, Poland is taking one of the top places on the list of countries with the worst opinion in terms of LGBTQ+ people situation. Ultra conservative political atmosphere forces young artists to declaime their queer spaces. The exhibition is tracking selected strategies of revealing, criticising and changing the rigid cultural constructs. In their photographs, performances and videos artists are marking the physical and virtual spaces of resistance.
SEMI-PRESENT is thought to be the laboratory and its main aim is rather asking questions than making statements. Its ambition is to explore infiltrations on the contact points between physical and virtual realities. The central place of the project is occupied by the notion of space understood in the broader sense of this term.
Michał Sypień – art historian, culture manager, curator, artist, educator. He studied art history at Jagiellonian University in Krakow and fine arts and design at Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. In years 2015 – 2017 he was part of the art collective “404” and he runs the project space under the same name. He collaborated with International Culture Centre in Krakow and Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor CRICOTEKA. He published his texts in Contemporary Lynx magazine. Currently, he is working in the education department in the
World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam.