Artists at Risk (AR)

Peace may seem hard to imagine in a year marked by unspeakable violence that batters our bodies, screens and minds. It is a difficult wish to make, but the artists and cultural professionals we work for and with - whose lives and art are coloured by these harsh struggles - want exactly that. Peace!

At the turn of 2023-2024, catching our breath from a hyper-intensive period of work, we are finally initiating celebrations of the 10th anniversary since AR’s founding in 2013!

So much has happened, and there are so many stories to tell. So we have decided to take it in parts. We’ll start with the past two years, which have been extremely challenging and significant in our development. These first slides are dedicated to the most general picture of the results of our work, globally.

AR relocated 767 AR-Residents in 2022-2023. This volume of support could only have been possible thanks to partnerships with over 300 hosting organisations; dozens of regional, national and international networks and funders; and of course our hardworking AR-Solidarity Teams. That’s quite a bit for a grassroots NGO in the arts! Read the full Year in Review on our website

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Artists at Risk (AR) wishes you a Peaceful and Happy New Year in 2024!

Image Credit: ArtVeda, Tunis

Holding a Ph.D. in Film Studies from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Kyiv, Ukraine, Kulchynska has worked as a curator at the Visual Culture Research Center / VCRC (2011–2019) and Set Independent Art Space (2019–2020). She’s the author of Meaning Production in Cinema: Genre Mechanisms (Kyiv 2017).

Read more about Lesia Kulchynska on the AR website: https://artistsatrisk.org/2023/06/16/ar-safe-haven-helsinki-resident-lesia-kulchynska/?lang=en

📸: 1. Lesia Kulchynska 2. Lesia Kulchynska and Boris Kashapov (and baby) 3. Boris Kashapov’s event ‘Only for Men’ at Myymälä2 gallery, Helsinki, Finland

Lesia Kulchynska is an Artists at Risk (AR) Safe Haven Helsinki Resident, organised and curated by Perpetuum Mobile ry (PM). This residency is co-funded by the Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture, the City of Helsinki Department of Culture and Leisure and TAIKE.

It has been a fruitful residency with Lesia Kulchynska, a Kyiv-based curator and visual studies researcher affiliated with the Research Platform of the Pinchuk Art Center, at AR-Safe Haven Helsinki. During her residency, Lesia presented the books The Right to Truth: Conversations on Art and Feminism and Every Person is an Artist at Oodi Library. Her partner, the performance and visual artist Boris Kashapov, held the event ‘Only for Men’ at Myymälä2 gallery. Lesia and Boris were the first residents funded by the Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture for artists and cultural workers from Ukraine.

Since the takeover by the Taliban in August 2021, Artists at Risk (AR) has been at the forefront of advocating for the safe evacuation of Afghan artists and cultural workers from Afghanistan. AR was the force behind a "List of Lists", gathered with partner organisations (mentioned below) around the world, of artists and cultural professionals in need of urgent relocation . To this day, we have received applications from 3217 Afghan artists and cultural workers (principals), which is, including their dependents, more than 6000 people.

This sounds like a large number - and it is! But only if governments rely on activist-NGOs in the arts to do their work for them. Currently, this is another major contention: why is all of this work for the BAP being done by civil society, which does not receive a cent of government funding? Helping these people is the obligation of the government under national and international law and conventions. Compared to the 1+ million Ukrainians that Germany was able to receive with hardly a grumble - 6000 people is a drop in the ocean.

“Wir schaffen das!” (“We can do this” - Chancellor Merkel’s famous statement when receiving over 1 million Syrians) is a total understatement. If there was a bit of political will, this would have happened in days, two years ago!!

Following extensive background checks and vetting, Artists at Risk (AR) currently has 251 applicants (with dependents, 1004) who are eligible for the BAP (which translates as the “Federal Reception Programme for Afghanistan and Other Humanitarian Admissions”). This is only a fraction of those in need.

Ask the German government for a #RealityCheck ! Share this post, or create your own! The BAP has to restart. Accept more applications. And get them out. Now.

If you are not concerned with Germany, remember that many other countries - including Finland - have taken no creative workers at all. Not even in August-September 2021. Disgraceful. Hold your own governments to account!

Read and share this link about an Afghan artist awaiting evacuation: https://www.kabulluftbruecke.de/en/stories-en/his-only-crime-was-to-be-an-artist-and-play-his-music/

The #RealityCheck campaign was initiated by Kabul Luftbrücke and is carried out by Artists at Risk (AR) along with 11 other civil society actors.

#SaveAfghanArtists
This “List of Lists” has been brought together by individuals and organisations including:

Artists at Risk (AR), Indexical Films, Loaded Pictures, Mazefilm, Asia Contemporary Art Forum, Initiative for Practices and Visions of Radical Care, Afghan American Artists & Writers Association, Penn Cultural Heritage Center List, UN Special Rapporteur for Cultural Rights Deeyah Khan, the UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Artistic Freedom and Creativity

#RealityCheck #Afghanistan #SaveAfghanArtists !

Today we are part of launching an important campaign for Afghans under threat!

Our goal is to raise awareness of the shocking fact that, so far, not one Afghan has been relocated as part of the so-called Bundesaufnahmeprogramm für Afghanistan, aka BAP. Not only that, but this entire programme, which initially promised to receive 1000 persons a month from October onward, has been on pause for months.

Join us in saying: The German government needs a #RealityCheck!

It has been almost two years (sic!) since the Taliban takeover. Despite all promises, the government has introduced obstacle after obstacle - one could speak of a “roadblock-by-bureacracy” - to all the efforts of civil society to bring progressive and hence threatened Afghans to safety in Germany. (See the previous post for our Open Letter to the German government.)

See the lettter on the campaign website (in German): https://www.kabulluftbruecke.de/updates/bundesaufnahmeprogramm-afghanistan-fuer-gerechte-verfahren-sichere-wege-ngos-stellen-ihre-forderungen-an-ministerinnen/

#SaveAfghanArtists

In anticipation of the launch of #REALITYCHECK on AR’s channels - a campaign initiated by Kabul Luftbrücke together with 13 NGOs active in Germany helping Afghans at risk - we would like to draw attention to the open letter that Artists at Risk (AR) and these German and international NGOs addressed to the German government concerning the Bundesaufnahmeprogramm für Afghanistan (BAP) earlier this year.

It was sent to Federal Minister of the Interior and Community, Nancy Faeser, and Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock. Together, we express our concerns with the BAP programme, and regret that until now, half a year after the announcement of the programme for Afghanistan and almost two years after the Taliban came to power, not a single Afghan applicant has been received in Germany through the Federal Admission Programme for relocations from Afghanistan (BAP).

“With the theme of solidarity the curatorial team focuses on unfolding many layers of empathy, support and care, as intrinsic notions towards more sustainable connections and radical ecology. Solidarity is approached as an essential component for a sustainable future. Knitting webs of empathy with our more-than-human surroundings can facilitate a process of unlearning anthropocentrism and its implications, in order to stand for and work towards ecological justice.”

SEA Foundation has hosted AR-Residents from Ukraine. The funds collected from VAEFE application and entrance fees are being donated to Artists at Risk (AR). Thank you for your continuing solidarity to all artists at risk via your fundraising!

Artists: Tommy Becker (USA), Sumin Kim (KR), Armando López Castañeda (MX), Occitane Lacurie (FR), Lo Yuen Ming & Lin Chun Yao (HK & TW), Miguel Rozas Balboa (CL/BE), Georgina Pantazopoulou (GR/NL), Claire Maske (USA), Derya Durmaz (DE/TR), Mara Chavez (MX), Daria Pugachova (UA), Karen Akerman & Miguel Seabra Lopes (BR), Oleksandr Stupak (UA), Moayad Alhariry (SY/NL), George Hiraoka Cloke (UK), Vali Karimnia (IR), Cheryl Pagurek (CA), Sabine Gruffat (FR/USA), Tasha Arlova (BY/NL), Pierre Chaumont (CA), Rebecca Birch (UK), Aylin Kuryel (TR)

When: 30 June to 2 July, 2023, 8 am to 11 pm CEST
Where: SEA Foundation, Tivolistraat 22, Tilburg, the Netherlands

More info: www.seafoundation.eu

The Video Art & Experimental Film Event (VAEFE), dedicated to artistic moving image productions, will take place from 30 June to 2 July this year! With the event, SEA Foundation is collecting funds for Artists at Risk (AR). Thank you!

The three-day event, curated and hosted by SEA Foundation in Tilburg, the Netherlands, presents 22 short video works and films selected from more than 350 submissions. The biennial is in its second edition and features works exploring approaches to solidarity.

The event features storytelling in experimental films, animations and documented performances in various genres and using different film-making techniques. The walk-in cinema presents 6 to 8 films each day and the programme loops every hour, providing the public with the opportunity to navigate multiple screens in the exhibition venue and garden.

For Hawash’s bio on the AR website, see here: https://artistsatrisk.org/2019/03/23/ar-resident-kholod-hawash/?lang=en

Hawash was part of Artists at Risk (AR) Pavilion in Helsinki at Galleria Rankka and, along with her husband, the visual artist Saddam Jumaily, also participated in AR’s #RiskandRebellion Symposium, which was the kick-off to Artists at Risk (AR) – A European Network of Safe Havens (AR-ENSH), a Creative Europe project co-funded by the European Union. The AR-ENSH Partner Institutions are Artists at Risk (AR), Artveda, CCCB, Stalker and ZKM | Karlsruhe. Read more here: https://artistsatrisk.org/2021/01/28/riskandrebellion-participants-33-34-kholod-hawash-and-saddam-jumaily/?lang=en

Kholod Hawash was an AR-ICORN Resident at Artists at Risk (AR) Helsinki as well as at AR-Porvoo and AR-Saastaoinen in 2019–2021.

A huge congratulations to Artists at Risk (AR) Alumna Kholod Hawash for being chosen to represent Finland at the Nordic Pavilion of the 2024 Venice Biennale!

Hawash's textile works (“jodaleias”), which are made using traditional Iraqi techniques, have been shown in exhibitions including the AR Pavilion-Helsinki "Mass Memory Machines" and such prestigious shows as ARS 22 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, as well as recent group exhibitions in Arles and Oslo, among others. She combines symbolism and metaphors with contemporary social issues reflecting the role of women. After she moved to Finland as an Artists at Risk (AR) Resident in 2017, she stitched her first daring jodaleia portraying a long-haired naked woman with a traffic cone on her head. Earlier she had stitched archeological symbols and animals from nature, but she could not portray naked women.