For her most recent project Culture Translated she has taken up the dialogue between the folk arts and crafts of Poland and India. As Dobrucka puts it, she's "interested to find out where one culture starts and another ends, using techniques that are unique to different regions. Each craft is highly complicated, involving numerous processes, but I would risk the statement that they are also all similar".
The focus of Culture Translated is traditional paper cutting design from the Polish city of Łowicz, which are then reinterpreted by local craftsmen in India in the gurajati and zardozi styles. The project will be presented as part of the Creative Cities Collection at London's Barbican, a cultural exchange programme between artists from China and the UK in celebration of the Olympic hosts. There are 60 new works in the collection, which will become part of the permanent collection of a major art institution in Beijing.
In mid-August Dobrucka joins the Albanian artists behind the Concrete Mushrooms Project for a group show at the Kunst Raum Riehen Im Berowergut in Switzerland. She became interested in Albania's vanishing bunkers (some 750,000 of which were built between 1967-1986 under the dictator Enver Hoxa and are since becoming extinct). In Switzerland several artists from various countries have been invited to engage in a dialogue about Albania's bunker "legacy" and the concerete that all Eastern European nations have in common through photographs and other media. The exhibition, which opens on the 16th of August 2012, is accompanied by the launch of a new book on the project, edited by Elian Stefa and Gyler Mydyti. Elian Stefea is the co-curator of the Concrete in Common exhibition, along with Niku Alex Muçaj.
At the end of August Dobrucka joins ten other Polish artists based in the United Kingdom for a show at the Kursaal Gallery Space in Southend-on-Sea essex. Here she will present the next installment of the Culture Translated project, executing the traditional Polish folk cut-out in collaboration with a local graffiti artist. The new work is to be presented alongside her earlier collaboration with craftsmen from India.Subject to Change. Perspectives from UK-based Polish Artistshas been produced by the Deconstruction Project as part of the programme of the Polish Arts Festival organised by Hungry Arts between the 14th of July - 2nd of September 2012. The exhibition is curated by Agnieszka Kucharko and Zbigniew Tomasz Kotkiewicz.
Alicja Dobrucka (born 1985) is a Polish artist based in London. Contemporary culture and traditional folk are important themes in her work, often coming together as a universal message on the passage of time and change. In 2011 she received the Sortiri Prize 2011 in Korce, Albania and in 2010 she received the highly competitive Deutsche Bank Fine Art Award and Grant in Photography. She has exhibited her works around the world, including the Asia Art Projects at the Studio X in Mumbai, Experimenta EXD'11 - Architectural Biennale in Lisbon (2011), as a part of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries at the ICA, London and the S1 ArtSpace and Site Gallery in Sheffield (2011), the 54th Venice Biennale with the WW Gallery (2011), UK Young Artists at Quad in Derby (2010), Hereford Photography Festival (2010), Brighton Photo Fringe, London Photomonth and at the Photographers’ Gallery, London (2010).
Dobrucka continues to make waves in the world of international photography, with her 2011 diptych I like you I like you a lot selected for publication in the Manifest Gallery International Photography Annual, a Competitive Annual Publication of Works of Contemporary Photography and Lens-based Art and/or Writing about Photography. This year there were 55 artists from 10 different countries featured in the book, presenting 83 individual works, selected individually by the Ohio-based Manifest Gallery. The diptych is from a series of over 40 images that confronts the precarious situation of various members of society in the troubled economic market, from recent retirees and the unemployed to illegal immigrants and refugees, even soldiers in combat and everyday people. There are also themes of sadness and bereavement based on the artist's emotions following the tragic loss of her younger brother. Interspersed are landscapes that carry a sensibility and vulnerability that carry forward the idea of traveling through various stages and episodes in life.
Culture Translated, Creative Cities Collection
Barbican Exhibition Hall 1, Golden Lane, London, EC2Y 8DL
2nd August - 7th August 2012 (private view: 1st August)
Concrete Mushrooms
Kunst Raum Riehen Im Berowergut in Switzerland
16th August - 7th September 2012 (private view: 15th August)
Subject to Change. Perspectives from UK based Polish Artists
Kursaal Gallery Space, Lower Level, Kursaal complex, Eastern Esplanade, Southend-on-Sea, Essex
24th August - 2nd September 2012 (private view: 23rd August)
For more information on Alicja Dobrucka, see: www.alicjadobrucka.com
Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: Exhibition info, artist bio