Curators Joanna Zielińska (Poland) and Mother Tongue (Tiffany Boyle and Jessica Carden, Scotland) are on research residencies at HIAP in February. You can meet them at the upcoming Meet the Curator event on Tuesday, February 21 at 3 pm. The event has been organised jointly by HIAP and FRAME, and will be held in the FRAME Seminar Room at Cable Factory (Entrance C, 4th floor).

Joanna Zielińska (b. 1976) is an art historian, writer and curator based in Poland. She is currently working on a long-term project on artists’ novels (2012–2013) in collaboration with David Maroto. Zielińska works as a curator at Cricoteka, the Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor in Kraków, where she is co-curating the centre’s inaugural exhibition with Maaike Gouwenberg. The exhibition will open at Crictoteka in December of this year and will focus on visual art and performativity. Zielińska will be in Helsinki until February 29th.

Cricoteka was founded in 1980 by Tadeusz Kantor (1915–1990) and operates simultaneously as an archive, a “museum”, a gallery and a scientific research centre. Based on the founder’s collection, it consists of objects and costumes of the Cricot 2 Theatre, Kantor’s theoretical papers, drawings and design works, video recordings, and photographic documentation as well as reviews, journals and books. In 2012 a new branch of the institution will open, becoming the first museum in Poland dedicated to a single artist. Its operations will focus on Kantor’s work as well as contemporary art, theatre performances, contemporary dance, concerts, seminars and workshops.

Mother Tongue is a research-led curatorial project initiated in 2009 by Tiffany Boyle (b. 1986) and Jessica Carden (b. 1987) in response to individual periods of research in northern Scandinavia and West Africa. The project, currently based in Stockholm, was formed out of a period of reciprocal exchange surrounding parallel concerns including (but not limited to) linguistic purity, indigenousness, ethnicity and post-colonialism. Mother Tongue endeavours to be in dialogue with artists, curators, writers, researchers and theorists. Mother Tongue will be in Helsinki until February 29th.

During the Meet the Curator event, Mother Tongue will discuss previous and forthcoming projects, and their ongoing research into colonialism in the Nordic region. Their presentation will emphasise their current participation on the CuratorLab programme (Konstfack, Stockholm) and their forthcoming exhibition at the CCA Glasgow: Germans, Speak German! The exhibition aims to explore current migration issues, juxtaposed with a consideration of those who have remained (voluntarily or otherwise) in their home country. The emphasis within heimat on rootedness and belonging as it has evolved – as a concept – in the 20th century provide the theoretical framework for the exhibition and essay series.

Zielińska’s and Mother Tongue’s residencies are part of HICP – Helsinki International Curatorial Programme, which is organised by HIAP in collaboration with FRAME Finnish Fund for Art Exchange.