Riverbeds: Forces of Flow | exhibition

Anna Kędziora’s exhibition Forces of Flow delves deep into riverbeds. It reveals the unseen worlds and imageries of rivers while inviting the viewer to actively participate: building observing touching and developing relationships with rivers. The exhibition—the latest iteration of the Poznań-based artist’s Riverbeds project—will be on view at the SIC! gallery in Wrocław throughout the summer. 

We Are Bodies of Water

This artistic metaphor penned by cultural theorist Astrida Neimanis (Bodies of Water) leads into the curatorial text for Anna Kędziora’s exhibition written by Tuçe Erel a Berlin-based curator writer and team member at Art Laboratory Berlin. The sphere of ​​Kędziora’s creative exploration is the embodied memory of rivers. The artist combines field studies with studio work and archival research in her practice. Her primary point of departure medium-wise is photography and photographic thinking. She experiments with ceramics video and installation. The Forces of Flow exhibition is the next iteration of one of her most recent projects Riverbeds in which she examines the interrelationship between people and rivers. Originally begun in Cambodia the scope of the project has since expanded to Poland France and the Middle Rhine in Germany. 

The artist explores riverbeds 

Anna Kędziora’s project at SIC! gallery extends beyond any specific river to encompass all of them—strongly regulated by manmade structures. The artist examines riverbeds and their environments co-opted and colonized by humans proposing connections based on empathic gestures. In her work for the exhibition Kędziora primarily made use of photography and greenware clay a term which refers to unfired clay of great fragility which may be returned to the earth’s circulation. 

An exhibition co-created with viewers

Riverbeds: Forces of Flow is an open invitation to collective endeavor: co-experiencing the creative process making direct contact with matter establishing bonds and tracing kinship between bodies of water. Through her work Anna Kędziora allows us to plunge beneath the surface shedding light on previously unseen riparian imageries. By rolling stones from clay and encouraging visitors to partake in this action the artist reenacts the creative forces of nature. In the process she questions the durability of products both natural and human-made. 

What the works are made from

The artist symbolically depicts the human-nature dichotomy through stone glass ceramics and photographic material. Throughout this summer you will be able to see an extract from a photographic series showing relics of plants from riverbanks as well as an installation composed of sandstone blocks among other pieces at Kościuszki Square while having the opportunity to interact with Anna Kędziora’s work. We have additionally planned a series of accompanying events including creating river stones with the artist the Dzika Glina series and guided tours.

ANNA KĘDZIORA – (1982 Poland) is a visual artist. She is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts and Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań with a PhD in visual arts and is an assistant professor in the Department of Photography at the Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts in Poznań. She has curated and co-curated photography exhibitions including at the 9th Biennale of Photography in Poznań 2015; TIFF Festival in Wrocław 2016; European Month of Photography in Berlin 2016; Interphoto Festival in Białystok 2017; Photomonth in Riga 2019; and the Chiang Mai Photo Festival in Thailand 2020. Kędziora has participated in artistic residencies in Spain Thailand and France and has presented her works in individual and group exhibitions and conferences in Poland Germany Austria Spain Greece Wales Sweden Indonesia South Korea Slovakia Portugal Belarus Lithuania and Malta.

TUÇE EREL – (1981 Ankara) is a Berlin-based curator art writer and cultural worker. She studied Sociology at METU (2005 Ankara) received her Art Theory and Critic MA at Anatolian University (2009 Eskişehir) and her second MA in Arts Policy and Management (with curating pathway) at Birkbeck College (2015 London). Her curatorial interests are archiving practices ecology Anthropocene posthumanism and post-digital theories.

This year SIC! gallery presents exhibitions by artists who have previously worked in other disciplines pursuing a creative strategy rooted in the cultivation or collection of naturally-occurring organic materials with ceramics clay or glass becoming a core element of their artistic language. 

Host or Publisher BWA Wroc?aw Galerie Sztuki Wspó?czesnej