Participants Visiting Critics Vienna 2024
Arkadiusz Półtorak (Poland) is a cultural studies scholar, art critic and curator based in Kraków, Poland. Assistant professor in the Department of Performativity Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. President of the Polish Section of the International Association of Art Critics AICA; in 2020-2023 served as its Secretary-General. Graduate of De Appel Curatorial Programme (2018). Member of the board of the Museum of Art in Łódź. Co-founder of the independent space for contemporary art and music Elementarz dla Mieszkańców Miast in Kraków (with Leona Jacewska and Martyna Nowicka). Author of the monograph on instituent practices in European art after the Great Recession Konkretne abstrakcje (Warsaw: IBL PAN 2020). He has published in multiple journals – including „Czas Kultury”, „Art History and Criticism” or „BLOK Magazine” – and contributed to art-related monographs and exhibition catalogues including Was sagt die kunst: gegenwartskunst und wissenschaft im dialog (eds. Monika Leisch-Kiesl and Franziska Heiss, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2022), Trouble with Value (ed. Kris Dittel, Eindhoven: Onomatopee 2020) or Kinship in Solitude – Perspectives on Notions of Solidarity (eds. Anna Jehle and Paul Buckermann, Hamburg: adocs 2017). His recent curatorial endeavors include the group shows Out of Joint (Galeria Studio, Warsaw 2021) and While I Kiss the Sky (co-cur. Goschka Gawlik; part of curated_by, Vienna 2019) beside individual exhibitions by Matthew C. Wilson (galeria SKALA, Poznań 2022), Maria Loboda (Elementarz dla Mieszkańców Miast, Kraków 2020), Jasmina Metwaly (Galeria Arsenał, Białystok 2020) or Jan Moszumański-Kotwica (CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw 2019).
Curator, cultural strategist and advisor, Filly Gueye (Senegal) has 15 years of experience in the performing arts starting from Los Angeles, CA to Dakar, Senegal.
In 2023, Filly joined RAW Material Company as Curator of Programs where she co-curated the recent production-residency exhibition “The City is Ours” with Architects Carole Diop and Nzinga Mboup on heritage and cultural preservation of material and immaterial histories, traditions and spaces of Dakar’s identity and the recent show with Zohra Opoku entitled “With every fibre of (my)being”addresses the complex issues of belonging and return for Afro-diasporic identities, herself descended from multiple trajectories of displacement.
Her curatorial practice feeds from her experience working with art practitioners and creative spaces to advocate for the preservation of the authenticity of African
contemporary art narratives and practices that reflect the geographical plurality of the continent and its diasporic expanding identity and history. Filly explores the writing of
curatorial texts provoking conversations around the celebration of black bodies and raise awareness about gender, racial, religious and traditional discrimination in societies.
Hana Halilaj (Kosovo) is a curator and researcher. She has curated exhibitions including Grey Eminence (2023), Violeta Xhaferi: Revisions (2023) at the National Gallery of Kosovo, Space for Memories Unmade (2022) at Galeria Qafa, Clubbing Insistence: After a Party (2022) at Doza Gallery and Toplocentrala, Informator (2022) at the Hessel Museum of Art, Alije Vokshi: I Decided to Draw Bigger Hands (2021) at Chert Lüdde, and Public Heros and Secrets (2020) at The National Museum of Kosovo. Halilaj previously held curatorial positions at Kunsthalle Portikus and Storefront for Art and Architecture, and contributed research to the C-MAP program at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). During the 2022-2023 academic year, she was Assistant Curator at CuratorLab at Konstfack University of Arts in Stockholm. Halilaj was the commissioner of the Pavilion of the Republic of Kosovo, awarded with a Special Mention for National Participation in the 60th edition of Venice Biennale. Currently, Halilaj is a curator at the National Gallery of Kosovo. She received her M.A. from the Center for Curatorial Studies, at Bard College.
Tristan Bera (France) is an author, researcher and cultural voyeur, whose solo, collaborative and conversational practice includes critical and fictional writing, curating and filmmaking. His papers, published in magazines (artpress, The Art Newspaper, Ocula) and exhibition catalogs (Centre Pompidou Paris and Metz, MAM Rio de Janeiro, Philharmonie de Paris, 8th Biennale of Thessaloniki and Bourse de commerce—Pinault Collection), are concerned with knowledge transfers across literature, art criticism and experimental philosophy and blends sociopolitical reflection, stream of consciousness, postcolonial topics and pop culture. In 2024, he is writer in residence at Salzburger Kunstverein, and has been awarded, together with Stefan Kalmár, the curatorial research fellowship of The Andy Warhol Foundation, for an exhibition dedicated to the influences of independent press Semiotext(e) on literature, theory, life, and art. He currently works on a book about ‘magnificent obsessions’, whose research has started at Walter Benjamin Archiv with the support of Onassis Foundation.
Verein K is an independent arts and cultural organization from Vienna, founded in 2017. Verein K focuses on projects in the field of contemporary art and culture connecting diverse cultural and social interests: critical approaches to contemporary art, creating curatorial platforms as well as enabling innovative cultural practices including diverse social groups.