What’s new at U–jazdowski in 2019

In 2019, the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art is planning a variety of activities relating to its art collection. Among the exciting exhibitions premiering this year, the largest is the collective project Plasticity of the Planet. There will also be solo exhibitions by established Polish artists, such as Wojtek Pustoła, Janek Simon, Maria Loboda, and Karol Radziszewski. In the eighth edition of the Project Room series, young Polish artists will be given the opportunity to debut their work in an institutional setting. For the first time, U–jazdowski will present Touch Art – an exhibition encouraging viewers to touch works of art. Activities at the Jazdów City Garden will revolve around the main theme for 2019: water. The U–jazdowski cinema will present two extensive film reviews. We will furthermore hold discussions about art and beyond, publish the Obieg web magazine and various paper publications, as well as organize guided tours, workshops, and residencies.

Plasticity of the Planet – which will start in March – will be the key project at U–jazdowski in the first half of the coming year. Part of a wider reflection on global processes – an important aspect of our programme – it will focus on the rapid and profound change occurring in nature, the creative power of which will inform most of the presented works. The main exhibition will be complemented by a simultaneous presentation prepared by the Forensic Architecture group – Centre for Contemporary Nature – where what they call “naturecide” will be subject to forensic investigation. The project will also include films screenings and a special edition of the online magazine Obieg.

The biggest exhibition in the second half of 2019 (planned for October) will be Collection, by the Dutch duo Bik Van der Pol, which will make use of the Collection of the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art. The project involves examining the collection in terms of the history of our institution and the changes it has undergone since its foundation in the 1980s.

Our Art Collection will also be used in an experimental educational project, in which the public will choose the works included in the exhibition through an online platform. Activities around the U–jazdowski collection will also be held in the spaces of the Open Collection Warehouse, created in the historic cellars of the castle. The planned launch of the Mediateka website will give access to the first batch of our digitized archives.

The U–jazdowski’s collection demonstrates how Polish art has contributed to changes in the world of art in recent decades. Our institution has consistently supported innovative Polish artists by collecting their works, but also by helping in the creation of new works and exhibitions. In January, we will present CUT, a solo show by Wojtek Pustoła, and in February will be an exhibition by Janek Simon, curated by Joanna Warsza. We have also planned exhibitions by Maria Loboda and Karol Radziszewski, the latter titled The Power of Secrets. In addition, the Project Room series will debut works by young Polish artists, namely Marta Krześlak, Dom Mody Limanka, Jan Moszumański, Wiktoria Walendzik, Horacy Muszyński, Róża Duda, and Michał Soja. The series will conclude with an official ceremony where an international jury will select the two best projects to be awarded prizes of PLN 20,000 and PLN 10,000.

The driving force behind many unconventional projects at U–jazdowski is its performative programme. Several projects from 2018 will be continued in 2019, such as Performance TV, investigating the influence of television on contemporary artistic practices. The residency of the independent group Kem, beginning in spring 2018, will continue until the spring of 2019 as a platform for events on the borders of performance, choreography, and queer culture. We will resume the exotic opera from the borderland of theatre, music, and visual arts – It's hard to get to Bródno, created by Cezary Tomaszewski at U-jazdowski. Additionally, we will present a new performative-musical project, To Be Real, exploring the relationship between contemporary art and club music. Michał Borczuch and Katarzyna Kalwat have also been invited to cooperate with U–jazdowski in 2019. Borczuch will realize the international paratheatrical Project Untitled (Group Portrait) in our gallery space in cooperation with Nowy Teatr in Warsaw and Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin. Katarzyna Kalwat will prepare a performance-installation-exhibition built around the biography and work of Maria Klassenberg, a forgotten figure of contemporary art.

In 2019, the audience will once again be invited to participate in the social project Jazdów City Garden, this time entitled Save Water and Take a Bath with Friends. The publication summarizing this and previous versions of the project will be used for future development plans for the park.

As every year, U–jazdowski’s programme is enriched by its artists-in-residence. Ours is the most extensive residency programme in Poland, offering artists the space and time to work on bold projects, often strongly rooted in social context. One example is the work of Alex Baczyński-Jenkins; as part of the Feedbacks residency, he will present a performance in which, from a queer perspective, he refers to the show Inne tańce/Other Dances by Akademia Ruchu from 1982. Finally, the Japanese collective hyslom will return to U–jazdowski in December 2019 with the exhibition/installation Itte – keatte/Back and Forth.

In 2019, U–jazdowski will also issue several new publications. In the first half of the year, we plan to release a summary of the Project Room 2018 and a catalogue of the exhibition Other Dances edited by Agnieszka Sosnowska. In the second half of the year, we will release A Small Anthology of Performance edited by Joanna Zielińska, Art Of Liberation. A press study from 1988-2018 by Zbigniew Libera, and the anthology Gotong Royong edited by Marianna Dobkowska and Krzysztof Łukomski. As usual, U-jazdowski will publish new editions of the web magazine – Obieg.

U–jazdowski also functions as a cinema, which will offer two new film reviews in 2019: Party's Over: Cinema and Hunger and Cinema of Crises. The first will include documentaries and films dealing with hunger, global food shortages, and inequalities in access to food, in the context of globalisation and various conflicts. The second programme will cover new media materials which present European crises as positive and indispensable contributors to change.

In 2019, as in previous years, U–jazdowski will engage in multifaceted educational activities. On June 1st – Children's Day – we will open Touch Art, a sensory exhibition for children and people with visual and auditory impairments. We will also continue popular series, such as Smykowizje and Art Viewpoints. There will be a new social storytelling project – Tell Me About It! – for parents and children, especially single parents. Another new project will be the uJazdów Neighbourhood Family Orchestra, which will launch in autumn.