TEXT re: Adrift Further East: Dispatches from 2017
Curator and critic Dorian Batycka reflects on 2017, a year that saw him pivot away from Western Europe in search of aesthetics less familiar…
source: blokmagazine.com
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April – Athens, Greece
I discovered Artists at Risk in Athens as a collateral event outside documenta 14, where they set up a pavilion showcasing work by Pınar Öğrenci, Erkan Özgen and Issa Touma. Artists at Risk is best defined somewhere in between a human rights organization, a residency and a curatorial platform. The mandate of the organization is to provide a safe-haven for artists who face an acute political threat, often simply for artistic activities. Founded by Marita Muukkonen and Ivor Stodolsky, two curators and cultural programmers with extensive international experience working with politically engaged art, Artists at Risk works towards facilitating safe passage into “AR-Safe Haven Residencies” with a focus on long-term projects, thereby bringing a sense of stability back to the lives of artists.
