Creative Commissions - Belfast 2024 is a new public art commissioning programme curated and delivered by Household and funded by Belfast City Council and the British Council.
We have invited international artists Zuza Golińska (Poland), Kanich Khajonsri (Thailand), Kasper Lecnim & Irmina Rusicka (Poland), Dina Mimi (Palestine), and Leandros Ntolas (Greece) to Belfast to create five exciting new temporary pieces of art in public across Belfast in 2024.
Supported by Household, they are collaborating with local creatives, residents and Council to explore and respond to the city. Their research has included a two-week intensive group research residency, tours, workshops, site-visits, conversations, and meetings. The resulting temporary artworks will consist of sculptures and installations, public moments and accompanying public programme events.
More details will be added to our website throughout 2024.
About the artists
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Zuza Golińska (Poland) is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the impact of architecture and public space on the human individual. Her art reflects on how human physical and mental wellbeing is influenced by the psychology of space in a time of civilisational acceleration and late capitalism. In her work, she frequently disrupts the clear-cut division between the functional and the aesthetic, examining the influence of spatial forms on emotions and the decisions of users.
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Kanich Khajohnsri (Thailand) uses photography and installation to think about demarcations, and the ownership of space. This includes engaging with the theoretical scape and non-physical knowledge transfer, such as storytelling, rumours, folklore, and other forms of oral history, to capture the specific and multiple dimensions of a place.
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Kasper Lecnim (Poland) is a visual artist and graduate of the E. Geppert Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław. He uses a variety of media and as part of his artistic practice has produced scarfs, organised house removals, cleared snow, crashed cars and challenged the directors of cultural institutions to duels. He likes mistakes and small provocations. He works individually and as a duo with Irmina Rusicka.
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Irmina Rusicka (Poland) is a visual artist who, as part of her artistic practice, has crashed cars, repaired motorcycles, made an acrobatic star at the Mausoleum of Soviet Soldiers, and collected money to make a hole in an art institution building. Her works combine social and political criticism with an existential dimension. She took part in the project The New Dictionary of Old Ideas (2019-2020), as part of which she participated in a residency program in Silk Museum (Tbilisi, Georgia) and Hablar En Arte (Madrid, Spain). She works individually and in a duo with Kasper Lecnim.
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Dina Mimi (Palestine) is a visual artist and filmmaker who works and lives between Jerusalem and Amsterdam. Her practice is multifaceted and uses video, sound, performance, and text to explore grief and as a fugitive body ask questions such as: how does grief sound? How do we search for fictional fractions within historical accounts? What happens to the body before the vanishing point? Dina’s work consists of extended research into death and memory, especially within historical events of the colonial past.
https://mediterraneabiennial.org/Dina-Mimi
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Leandros Ntolas (Greece) is an artist currently based in the Hague, the Netherlands. His multi-disciplinary practice combines a phenomenological and experimental approach with research into diverse fields ranging from the study of light, optics and perception, to philosophy, architecture, history of religion, and metaphysics. Aside from his studio practice, Ntolas has been active in the field of art in public space and has exhibited works in Greece and the Netherlands.
Creative Commissions - Belfast 2024
The artist, commissioners including the BCC team and British Council, and members of Household - as well as some of the artists included in Household's Community Takeovers commissions - during a group visit and reception with the Lord Mayor at Belfast City Hall in August 2023.
Research image: digital render of dry docks produced by Leandros Ntolas in August 2023 during a two week residency in Belfast. Leandros plans to create a site specific installation responding to a location in Belfast. He will use a multitude of elements, including projections, and interventions with light and sound, to transform the space and create a unique and visceral experience for the visitor. The work will use elements related to the past of Northern Ireland - from prehistory to modern times - and will incorporate symbols and iconography, folktales and myths, to create new connections.
Research image: digital render of the Rotterdam Bar in Sailortown, produced by Leandros Ntolas in August 2023 during a two week residency in Belfast.
'Mind How You Dance: A Central and Eastern Europe Monument Project' is a work by Irmina Rusicka, installed at The New Dictionary of Old Ideas exhibition, TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Szczecin in 2020. In 2024, together with Kasper Lecnim, Irmina will create a temporary public artwork in Belfast that plays with the city
'Come brushes' by Kasper Lecnim, 2020, used electronics, brush, 30 x 15 x 8 cm