RURAL ART GALLERY 2009-2025
An international, grassroots art gallery project co-created with the residents of a micro-region.

The essence of the project is both the archiving of space and the involvement of the community representing a given place. The residents of the areas where I carry out the project become “curators.” They point out places and objects that interest them. Then I try to present them in the same way as in a typical art gallery: picture frames, platforms, railings. The collection of photographs documenting my site-specific activities presents the idea of non-urban areas as the heritage of human tradition. It is a kind of inventory of places that will change or disappear completely in the coming decades. It is also a polemic with the formula of the art gallery as an institution that separates, selects, or commercializes. The project is enriched by further interesting objects from individual creative residences.

This is an artistic inventory, an initiative launched in 2009 as part of the European Regions of Culture (EROC) program. Activities took place in Poland’s Kujawsko-Pomorskie Province, in the South Ostrobothnia region of Finland, and in Cornwall, United Kingdom. In 2024, the project continued during an artist residency at Mother’s Milk Art in Kansas, USA. In 2025, the project took place in Germany during the artist residency “into the fields” at Denk-und Produktionsort Libken, thanks to a grant from Culture Moves Europe, the Goethe-Institut, and “Polish Culture Abroad” awarded by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. That same year, in Ohio, USA, during a one-month residency in Cleveland, and in Poland during the MKIDN program “Reymont. Interventions” at MGOK in Więcbork. In 2026, I continued in Cieszyn and Český Těšín, as well as in West Bengal and Delhi, India. I will systematically add to the materials, ultimately creating an interactive archive of places.

The first area of my activities in 2009 was the village of Lucim in Poland. This place is particularly symbolic for me, as I studied in the studios of Prof. Bogdan Chmielewski, Witold Chmielewski, and Wiesław Smużny, who, as Grupa Działania/Grupa 111, carried out avant-garde “Lucim Actions” there in the 1970s-1990s.

_{The project was carried out thanks to a grant from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute’s “Polish Culture in the World 2025” program.}