New Year, New Partners, New Locations!

Estrangement will continue in 2009/2010 through a collaboration with three leading partner organisations: Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk, The Showroom, London, and A Prior Magazine, Ghent. It will involve a group of specialists, which will include: Janna Graham, Curator of Education at Serpentine Gallery, Emily Pethick, Director of the Showroom, Els Roelandt, Editor-in-Chief of A Prior, Francesca Recchia, lecturer and researcher at Kurdistan University (based in London and Irbil), and numerous artists. It will create a broad international collaborative discursive platform that will focus on process, encounter and debate as an open form of research into concept of Estrangement. The project will consist of a series of artist residencies, exhibitions, performances and interventions in public space in London and Gdansk, and will culminate in the publication of a special issue of the art magazine A Prior.

The concept of Estrangement developed through a series of discussions and collaborative projects between Iraqi artist Hiwa K. and Polish curator Aneta Szylak as an attempt to create a form for mutual translation and collaborative work that is not restricted to one cultural format. The first stage of the project was initiated during a workshop for Iraqi artists in the Kurdish univerisity city Sulaimany in 2008. The project will be also relaunched in Sulaimany in mid-June 2009.