Blue Republic Thursday, March 18, 2021

$10 for members, $15 for guests

FREE registration until Thursday, March 11, 2021

Register by emailing waac@womensartofcanada.ca or call the WAAC office 416-922-2060

Social and environmental concerns in the work of Blue Republic 

SYNOPSIS: Blue Republic is a collaboration of artists Anna Passakas and Radoslaw Kudlinski, based in Toronto, Canada, and Krakow, Poland. Blue Republic’s research is concerned with discourses around globalization, contemporary experience, and disruption of the binary that divides art from a broader social space. Their artistic practice consists of trans-media and site-specific installations, public interventions, as well as land art, new media, performance and participatory projects. 

Based in Toronto and Krakow, Blue Republic is the collaborative artistic practice of Anna Passakas and Radoslaw Kudlinski. Both artists were born and raised in Poland. Growing up in a country struggling to rebuild itself from the ruins of wars and the aggressive colonial attempts of powerful neighbours, as well as their subsequent immigration to Canada, imparted a legacy that continues to inform their work and research in which themes of trauma, destruction and impermanence – but also humour and paradoxes – are woven in with the global, social, and environmental concerns fundamental to their artistic practice.

At the core this practice is the concept that contemporary artists can not only be the witnesses of their times but also participants in solidarity with the events and people that inspire their artwork. For example, the artists’ involvement in anti-poverty activism in urban areas of Brazil and their volunteer work with inmates of Ontario’s correctional system provided experiences that inspired many of Blue Republic’s projects.

Career highlights include exhibitions at the MacLaren Art Centre (The Uncanny Outdoors), curated by Emily McKibbon, Krakow’s MOCAK (Nature in Art), curated by Delfina Jalowik (2019), Wanderlust: Actions, Traces Journeys 1967-2017, at UB Art Gallery, curated by Rachel Adams (2017-18), Made in Blue Republic, Galeria Arsenal and BWA Zielona Gora, curated by Monika Szewczyk and Wojciech Kozlowski (2017), 2013-14 Biennial of Urbanism and Architecture in Shenzhen/Hong Kong, curated by Ole Bouman, Agency of Unrealized Projects at daadgalerie/ Serpentine Galleries (Berlin, and London), curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Julia Paynton Jones (2012); Die Andere Seite at Ludwig Forum for International Art (Aachen); CCA Ujazdowski Castle (Warsaw); Galleria D’Arte Moderna di Bologna (Italy); Darling Foundry, Montreal; Doris McCarthy Gallery, U of T, Toronto, and Galerie René Blouin, Montreal.

Blue Republic’s projects have been reviewed in Artforum, Art Papers, Art Monthly, MAP Magazine, Boarder Crossings, Canadian Art, Sculpture, Spacing Magazine, Esse Arts + Opinions, Le Devoir, the Globe and Mail, National Post and the Toronto Star.

https://bluerepublic.ca

Instagram @blue.republic