Portuguese, Polish & Romanian artists spend unique residency in Jersey
ArtHouse Jersey recently welcomed three artists of Polish, Portuguese and Romanian descent to take part in a residency to learn about, research and explore the lived experience of their compatriots, living within each of these three significant local communities, and creating new artworks that will be exhibited in May of 2022.
Following a highly competitive international call-out for artists of any discipline, Cliff Andrade (Portugal), Natalia Kalicki (Poland) and Dana Olarescu (Romania) were selected to come to Jersey and each create a piece of work that celebrates the contribution that each of these communities makes to Island life. The artists will contribute to the briefing of a muralist concentrating on the lived experience of the Portuguese, Poles and Romanians in Jersey that will be created later in 2022.
We are grateful for the support of the Polish Cultural Institute, The Embassy of Portugal and the Romanian Cultural Institute and is exploring opportunities to exhibit the artworks in London later in 2022.
Learn more about the selected artists below.
CLIFF ANDRADE (Portugal)
Cliff Andrade works with a diverse and dynamic range of media, combining traditional printmaking, photography & time-based media to explore notions that dominate his lived experience: belonging & un-belonging, place & memory, displacement, labour & poverty, hope & hopelessness and notions of family - and the emotional potency of the intersections between them all. Earlier this year Andrade, alongside fellow Portuguese artist Ana Palma, won a competition to have his work included in "Paula Rego and Her Contemporaries", an exhibition which ran earlier this summer at London's 12 Star Gallery (story here).
He is particularly interested in the idea of ‘home’ and its importance to our sense of personal identity. His work contains great imaginative, emotional power within a very intelligent, analytical approach, and it is the tension between these two elements that make it fascinating. Drawing on personal and social histories, his rigorous commitment to research allows him to weave many sources and references into his work. Often working directly with migrant and particularly Portuguese diasporic experiences and communities, he fuses the personal and culture specific with broad references to relate to both the individual and the universal.
Cliff Andrade said at the time: “I was following ArtHouse Jersey because several years ago a friend of mine at art school had told me about the organisation. I knew there were Madeirans there, in Jersey, and given the themes of my work I thought maybe one day I might be able to make a proposal or apply for a residency to ArtHouse Jersey to work with that community. I am super-excited to come to the Island. Firstly, because I finally get to visit the mythical Island of Jersey. It is mythical to me because I’ve always known that there were lots of Madeirans there and that the majority of them were descended from my village on Madeira. So I have always been curious about it. I am also excited to learn about their experience out there - of settling, of belonging, of how they feel about Jersey and how they feel about Madeira - both in its own right but also because it gives me the opportunity to learn more about my own experience of migration and belonging as a Madeiran. As an emerging artist, I am also looking forward to being on the Island with two other artists who I hope to learn from and exchange ideas and ideas about approaches with as I develop my skills of working with and in a community setting.”
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrcliffywiffy/
NATALIA KALICKI (Poland)
Raised between the Canadian West Coast and Warsaw, Natalia Kalicki is an artist, researcher and cook with a background in anthropology. She holds a BFA from Concordia University and an MA degree in Anthropology from the University of Leipzig. She has attended Listhus Art Residency in Iceland, Pilotenkueche AIR in Germany, and Shangyuan Museum Art Residency in China, and was the program coordinator of Pilotenkueche International Art Residency as well as an assistant for the Residency Department at U-jazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Poland. Natalia has maintained a studio practice in Leipzig since 2016, where she interweaves installation and text with painting and drawing. Her written work focuses on issues of cultural governance and sustainability. She has received two DAAD scholarships, CALQ mobility funding, the Skammdegi AIR award, and was granted support by the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation twice.
Upon arriving in Jersey Natalia Kalicki said: “Engaged art practices, migration and memory, translocality; there are so many areas of my personal and professional interests that meet through ArtHouse Jersey's residency program. I feel very lucky to be a part of it.”
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studio_gnat/
DANA OLARESCU (Romania)
Dana Olărescu is a London-based, socially engaged artist who focuses on challenging minority exclusion and environmental injustice. Through participatory methodologies that democratise access to art and knowledge, she aims to give agency to underserved migrant groups so they can become active co-producers of culture. Most recently, she has co-designed and built a low-impact straw bale classroom with young asylum seekers at May Project Gardens, London, and engaged with residents affected by West Burton power station’s decommission in Gainsborough, as part of the ‘Decommissioning the Twentieth Century’ investigation run by Keele University. Dana was previously half of performance company There There, whose concerns revolved around reclaiming Eastern European identity in the West. Together, they worked with numerous participants, co-creating performances and building alternative platforms that enabled conversation between minority groups. Her projects have been presented at British art institutions including Tate Modern, London Short Film Festival, Low Carbon Design Institute, Art Gene, x-church, and Incheon Art Platform (South Korea), La Virgule (France), Foodculture days (Switzerland), Tanzhaus NRW (Germany), among others.
Dana Olarescu said at the time: “I am incredibly excited to be taking part in the Home residency at ArtHouse Jersey, where I will be engaging with fellow Romanian locals and creating artwork reflecting migrant experiences. I was initially forwarded the call out by a former school friend now based in Jersey, who considered it relevant to my practice, so I am thrilled to have the chance to learn about the local context, and particular place-based challenges and opportunities. Diasporic identities tend to vary widely depending on geographical locations, and I am keen to discover how Jersey’s specific environment affects this. I will also be working with ArtHouse Jersey and in Jersey for the first time. I hope participating in the residency will equip me with the space and time to build relationships based on trust with Romanian participants, local allies, and fellow artists in residence while pushing me to create artwork that echoes current global concerns, seen through a hyperlocal lens.”
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dana_olarescu/
