Rethinking Eastern Europe 2024
Our collective is comprised of diverse contemporary visual artists engaging in redefining the concept of “Eastern Europe.” We seek to present more nuanced narratives about a diverse region often reduced to a homogenous mass through photography, moving image, sculpture and visual art. Our understanding and emotional connection to the region and its past, and our love and respect for tradition is blended with modernity, creating a multifaceted explorations of identity, memory in “Eastern Europe.
“Rethinking Eastern Europe” started as a cultural event in May 2024 curated by Zula Rabikowska. The event combined an exhibition, film screenings and a symposium at The Photobook Café in London. Rabikowska invited of 18 artists from Poland, Romania, Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, Denmark, UK, USA, and Ukraine working with photography, moving image, sculpture and performance.
Zula Rabikowska
Zula Rabikowska is a queer visual artist and lecturer based in London. Zula was born in Poland and grew up in the UK and her documentary practice is influenced by her experience of immigration. Zula draws a lot of creative inspiration from her upbringing and Polish heritage and explores themes of migration, displacement, gender identity and LGBTQI+ communities. Member of the Association of Photographers and Women Photograph, Zula is the founder of our collective.
Ksenia Kazintseva
Ksenia is an interdisciplinary fine artist with a focus on immersive installation. She is also a painter, and works mainly around the idea of how culture fragments due to conflict, and how connection through cultural memory, traditional crafts and folklore can heal communities across the world.
Vera Hadzhiyska
Vera Hadzhiyska is a Bulgarian multi-disciplinary artist, curator and photography lecturer based in Portsmouth, England. Her practice is informed by the study of migration, cultural and national identity, history and collective memory. Her work begins autobiographically, tracing family narratives and shared traumas. Through the use of photography, archival documents, audio and video installations Vera examines historical and political events in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe, their impact on people’s lives and identity.
Grupa Lono
Grupa Łono is a collective from Poland created on the initiative of two artists, Marcelina Amelia and Marta Borkowska, who were united by a dream. "Living in times when women have to fight for the freedom of their bodies every day, we felt the need to create an antidote, a place of free expression, compassion and fun." This is how the art incubator – Grupa Łono – was created. The group operates in the field of visual arts and social activities, the artists focus on research threads around the female body, emotional blockages, connection with nature, its cycles and the relationships we create with each other.
Ania Ready
Ania Ready is a Polish-British photographic artist based in near Oxford, UK. She works with photography, archives, and texts. In her work, she explores the human psyche, and how it can be affected by outside forces: societal, medical and political ones. Ania is interested in what it means to have an agency in how we look and respond to the world. She has a special interest in the topic of femininity and madness.
Diana Serban
Diana Serban is a certified Climate-Aware photographer and Brand Director based in London. Her work explores themes like constructed realities, climate change, and mental health.
Eve Gil
Eve Gil is a Polish-Welsh artist and designer, working primarily within sustainable fashion. She is often inspired by Polish traditional dress to create new and modern designs with both a history and a future. She works extensively with embroidery and upcycling, using them as a artistic medium and as a fashion techniques, and delves between the lines of ‘art’, ‘craft’ and ‘fashion’ and creating pieces that live and thrive in the grey area with those lines.
Erika Nina Suárez
Erika Nina Suárez (she/they) is an international documentary and portrait photographer living in Budapest, Hungary. Her work delves into youth culture, tradition, and alternative communities, utilizing medium and large format processes for their ability to produce high-quality prints.
Katie McCraw
Katie McCraw is a visual artist, photo editor and archivist. She is originally from Scotland but has spent 11 years living in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Katie's work explores the multiple identities that people hold, questioning Western concepts of memory and dominant narratives of history. Her ambition is for her images to help people feel less alone and to recognise that we are all partakers in the madness and confusion of this world. Her practice combines alternative photographic methods and text with documentary methods.
Patricia Petersen
Patricia Petersen is a Danish/Polish visual artist based in London. Inspired by experimental ethnography, Petersen's work challenges power structures by reframing historical and political narratives through a feminist lens of poetic absurdity. Her work explores the correlations between (post)memory, language, nature, and the body, shaped by her experience of growing up between different cultures.
Paulina Korobkiewicz
Paulina Korobkiewicz is a Polish photographer and visual artist based in London. Her work consists of photography combined with text and moving image. Focusing on everyday objects within public space, she explores themes of home, migration, trauma of post-communist states and politics of identity.
Lina Ivanova
Lina Ivanova is a London-based artist from Bulgaria. Leaning into intuition, chance and experience, her practice is led by process, material and experimentation. Negotiating the concept of place, Lina creates installations using found and archival material, photography and cement casts. Her recent public art installation in Croydon, funded by the Desire Paths Project Grant from Turf Projects, underscores her commitment to engaging with spaces and communities.
Laura Bivolaru
Laura Bivolaru is a Romanian visual artist, writer and curator living in London, UK. Through photographs, writing, and moving image, Bivolaru tries to undo the knots of history that shape both national discourse and individual life in Romania.
Nastassja Nefjodov
Nastassja Nefjodov is a German-Russian visual artist based in Amsterdam. Her artistic trajectory reflects a profound engagement with the emotional aftermath of war-related trauma, focusing on its impact on family and intimate relationships.
Viktoria Hrytsa
Viktoria Hrytsa is a Ukrainian photographer based in Prague, Czechia, who uses a bold, colourful aesthetic fusing contemporary symbolism with stereotypical imagery often associated with Eastern Europe, such as farming, animals and poverty. Blending various histories with contemporary experiences, Hrytsa creates her own universe.
10- 14 Waterloo Place
Brighton
BN2 9NB
Map
Collectives Hub - Main Gallery
4 October - 17 November
Wednesday 12:00–17:00
Thursday 12:00–17:00
Friday 12:00–17:00
Saturday 12:00–17:00
Sunday 12:00–17:00
