OPENING: 14/08/2026, 19:00

Rupert invites you to the Mutual Empathies final exhibition presenting the work of this year’s resident artists, Saule Suleimenova and Maithu Bùi. 

Developed during a six–week residency at Rupert, the exhibition brings together two artistic practices that, in distinct ways, respond to the aftermath of violence and its lingering presence: through collective memory, inherited narratives, war waste, and ordinary materials. The presentation is curated by JL Murtaugh and curatorial fellow Katažyna Jankovska. As part of the opening evening, visitors are invited to open studios, where they can explore research materials and gain insight into the artists’ residency process.

Suleimenova presents two new large-scale works from her long-running cellophane painting series, created from repurposed plastic bags, along with two new sculptures from the Zheti Ana (Seven Mothers) series. Her research at Rupert has focused on the children of the city, synthesising historical images of forced migration with scenes from contemporary life in Vilnius, as well as the caregivers that attend to all our needs but whom are too-often anonymous. 

Bùi continues their long-term research into unexploded ordnance and how societies respond to conditions of war. Here, they present the Punched Cards series, which draws on historical systems of classification and information storage to explore fragmentation, collective trauma and unwritten histories. These reinterpreted datasets are shown alongside found scrap metal objects, often collected to produce weaponry, which explore the shifting roles of material through use, reuse and transformation.

What remains hidden in plain sight? Discarded plastic and metal objects become points of departure for uncovering overlooked histories marked by absence, violence, and displacement, yet continuing to shape everyday life.

About the Programme
Mutual Empathies is a multi-year programme initiated by the Rupert Centre for Art, Residencies, and Education and the Goethe-Institut Lithuania. Each edition connects two artists from distinct contexts for parallel residencies and public programming. It encourages artistic connections that would not otherwise take place, creating new responses to global society’s countless ecopolitical questions.

The programme is led by JL Murtaugh (curator, Rupert, Vilnius) and Anna Maria Strauß (director, Goethe-Institut Lithuania). The 2026 Mutual Empathies curatorial fellow is Katažyna Jankovska. Artist nominators for this and upcoming editions of Mutual Empathies include Inga Lace (chief curator, Almaty Museum of Arts), Nick Yu (independent curator, Hong Kong), Sofia Dati (curator, WIELS), Mijoo Park (independent curator and head of 2026 Gwangju Biennale Academy ICC), Helen Turner (artistic director, E-WERK Luckenwalde), and Dr. Bettina Korintenberg (director, ifa-Galerie, Berlin and Stuttgart).

Saule Suleimenova (b 1970) is an artist working at the edge of many mediums, incorporating deconstructions of painting, photography, drawing, installation, and public art to create a meaningful social impact. In addition to her visual work, Suleimenova organises educational, ecological, and social events focused on resistance, collective memory, and promoting the empowerment of the historically disadvantaged. After receiving her MFA from the Kazakh National University of Arts, Suleimenova went on to graduate from the Almaty State Academy of Architecture and Civil Engineering in 1996 with a degree in architectural design. Her recent projects include the 2025 Bukhara Biennial, UZ; the 2025 Kyiv Biennial, Warsaw PL; Jeonbuk Museum of Art, Jeonju SK; the 2020 Lahore Biennale; Manifesta 11, Zürich CH; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah AE; along with many other international projects.

Maithu Bùi (b 1991) is an artist based in Berlin. Bùi’s practice investigates dispositions and relational proximity through shared history of violence, science, and technology. In their work, incorporating video, installation, mixed media, and writing, Bùi translates negotiations of life into spatial and situated encounters, with a particular interest in how resonance, speech, and agency emerge. They completed their MFA in 2023 at UdK (Berlin DE), following earlier education in Computational Linguistics and Philosophy at Ludwig Maximilian University (Munich DE). Their recent projects include ‘Bells and Cannons at CAC, Vilnius; the 12th Berlin Biennale, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, DE; Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, DE; Kunsthalle Bratislava, SK; aashra Ashkal Alwan, LB; Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig, DE; E-WERK Luckenwalde, DE; and Akademie der Künste, Berlin, DE.

The 2026 edition of Mutual Empathies is financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Goethe-Institut Lithuania. Rupert’s programmes are supported by Vilnius City Municipality. Rupert’s partner is INVL Family Office.

Curators: JL Murtaugh, Katažyna Jankovska

Production: Augustė Verikaitė​​

Coordination: Gabrielė Golubovičiūtė

Communication: Kornelija Žvinklytė

Technician: Jokūbas Adamonis

Photography:  Laurynas Skeisgiela

Design: Jana Sofie Liebe and Augustinas Milkus

Special thanks to Anna Maria Strauß, Monika Lipsič, Viktorija Šiaulytė.

Curator Anders Härm will lead a curator’s tour of the exhibition Triumph of Galatea: Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. The international group exhibition, referring to the myth of Pygmalion in its title, examines the changes and developments in human experience in culture and society in connection with the onslaught of new technologies.

The myth of Pygmalion undoubtedly embodies one of humanity’s greatest archetypal desires: to transform a lifeless object made by human hands into a living being. This myth has been used as a metaphor in many texts on new media art since the 1990s, but only now, when the development of artificial intelligence and biomechanical humanoid robots has reached an advanced phase, can it be dealt with seriously. The topic concerns artists as much as it concerns humanity as a whole, inevitably raises questions about the latest developments in human evolution and explores how our self-perceptions and self-images are changing. In a sense, our relationship with artificial intelligence is like a duet: it is a two-way relationship, and we are reflected in it in both good and bad ways.

With the rapid advancement of technology, artificial intelligence and augmented reality, i.e. GPS trackers, Google Maps, translation bots have become an indispensable part of our everyday lives. Computers and mobile phones have become almost invisible, an essential part of our everyday reality that we only notice if they are not there. Robots now control whether we are human, and humans do not know to what extent they can still control anything.

This event is a part of the finissage of the exhibition Triumph of Galatea: Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

Foto: Aron Urb.

OPENING: 28/08/2026, 19:00
Language: opening in Polish; PJM (Polish Sign Language) interpretation: Marta Stępniak; Ukrainian translation: Volodymyr Dyshlevuk.

Flesh is a substance that evokes deeply conflicting feelings in us: from primal appetite to instinctive revulsion and fear. Through this exhibition, Włodzimierz Maciejczyk invites us to confront this reaction.

The title of the exhibition, Soft Tissue Examination Protocol, sounds like a dry medical report. Yet, beneath this deliberate, almost forensic detachment lies the artist’s pulsating, painful empathy for all living beings, for degraded nature, and for its fate in the contemporary world. The motif of flesh forms the central axis of Maciejczyk’s current research and creative inquiries at the Doctoral School of Humanities and the Arts (SDNHiS). Here, it emerges not merely as a visual element, but as a universal language for discussing our own fragility and the hidden cruelty of the world we inhabit.

Włodzimierz Maciejczyk (b. 2001) is a versatile intermedial artist, painter, sculptor, and performance artist. He is a graduate of the Faculty of Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts of Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS), where he is currently pursuing doctoral studies at the Doctoral School of Humanities and Arts. He completed his master’s degree with honors, defending his thesis under the supervision of Dr. Anna Barańska, while his supplementary diploma project—realized in the Department of Intermedia under the guidance of Prof. Jan Gryka—also earned distinction. In his artistic practice, Maciejczyk fluidly blurs the boundaries between disciplines, combining painting and sculpture into interdisciplinary installations. His art is deeply socially engaged; he addresses key contemporary issues such as the commercialization of art, ecological crises, the tragic consequences of war, the plight of animals, and discrimination.

The artist has received over a dozen national and international awards and distinctions, including the First Prize at the 2nd VIA CARPATIA Art Biennale (2023) and the “Żurawie – Lublin Cultural Distinction” Award (2024). His artistic work has frequently been supported by prestigious scholarships, such as the Minister of Science Scholarship (2024), the Marshal of the Lublin Voivodeship Scholarship (2023), and the Rector’s Scholarship for top students (2021–2024). He has exhibited his work in dozens of group exhibitions in Poland and abroad, including in Italy, the United Kingdom, and Slovakia.

The exhibition open until: 20 September 2026 (Tue–Sun, 12:00 – 19:00).
Free admission.

raum AU and the Koroška Gallery of Fine Arts (KGLU) invite you to the opening of the exhibition Persistent Remains of Europe by architect and photographer Peter Rauch, which will take place on Friday, July 31, 2026, at 7 p.m. at the raum AU Gallery (Partizanska pot 12, Slovenj Gradec). The exhibition is curated by Jernej Kožar (KGLU).

The exhibition is being developed as part of the “Journey through Arte Utile” project, carried out by the non-governmental organization of public interest raum AU and KGLU. Through research residencies in the Pino Poggi studio, the project enables contemporary artists to engage in a direct dialogue with his body of work and the principles of the “Arte Utile” manifesto, which views art as a socially responsible practice capable of changing the world. The research residency is dedicated to interdisciplinary exploration and new interpretations of Poggi’s extensive and complex body of work.

Participants in the research residency to date have included Tadej Pogačar, Tobias Putrih, Vesna Bukovec, Ištvan Išt Huzjan, Polonca Lovšin, Tomaž Furlan, Heinz Schütz, Aphra Tesla, and Marjetica Potrč, with Peter Rauch joining the residency series this year.

The exhibition Enduring Remains of Europe is the result of a two-month research process undertaken by Peter Rauch during his residency. Through an exploration of the archive and artistic legacy of Pino Poggi, it raises questions regarding European cultural heritage, collective memory, and the significance of the fragment as a bearer of history.

Peter Rauch on researching the archive of Pino Poggi and the “Arte Utile” manifesto:
“On the floor of the KGLU storage room, I found stones stacked up. Some were roughly hewn, others smooth river stones. Unlike architectural models, the form here is found, not created. Jernej tells me the title: “Important Remains of Europa”. I barely managed to transport them by car from Sicily. They are truly heavy. There are faces in the stones—Pino carved them into fragments of the foundations of our culture. He reportedly gathered them in Greece, Crete, Italy, and Sicily. He once carved tombstones; here, he depicted the myth of Europa. I read about the Greek Zeus, the Roman Jupiter, and his ruse. I look for interpretations where someone points out that the myth does not exalt love, but rather rape. In an article about Europa, Tomaž Mastnak concludes that among interpreters of the history of the European idea, he found only one who called this myth ‘repulsive.’ In my garden, I gaze at a pile of construction waste. Amidst the chunks of concrete and brick, I find bones, bullet casings, and some glass. A neighbor, an elderly lady, watches what I am doing from across the fence. She never says a word. She walks away and sits on the bench in front of the house.”

What am I doing? I am repeating Pino’s gesture: creating a whole from fragments, inscribing meaning into found forms. I gather fragments of construction waste—occasionally transforming them into other materials—and position them, insisting that they hold more significance than one might be willing to acknowledge. I reveal what emerges as I go.“

PETER RAUCH je arhitekt, fotograf in predavatelj. Diplomiral je na Fakulteti za arhitekturo Univerze v Ljubljani in magistriral iz fotografije na Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design v Londonu. Predava na Oddelku za fotografijo VIST ter na Akademiji za likovno umetnost in oblikovanje v Ljubljani, kjer trenutno vodi Katedro za fotografijo.
V svoji ustvarjalni praksi secira materijo grajenih objektov in vztraja v razmerju med dokumentom in konstrukcijo. Na teoretskem področju raziskuje vznik mišljenja v konstituciji objekta ter vprašanje preloma v poljih umetnosti, znanosti in politike. Med njegova pomembnejša dela sodijo Objekti (2009–2015), Tretji kraj (2014), Skupnost (2012–2013), Podobe, zgodbe, sekvence (2011) in Traffic Kids (2009). Leta 2020 je s somišljeniki ustanovil produkcijski prostor za fotografijo in sorodne prakse Kela v Ljubljani.

When: 30/07/ 2026, 16:00–18:00 Where: Chittussiho 144, Prague 6
Entry: donation

The StonyTellers Collective invites you to a workshop titled „Who is talking in the garden?“, which is part of a series of workshop taking place during the Biennale Matter of Art 2026, in the Garden of the art and community center Tusculum Prague.

The interdisciplinary collective StonyTellers will bring participants to the garden of Tusculum as part of their workshop titled Who is talking in the garden?, which begins at 4 p.m. Through a collaborative exploration of the site from less conventional perspectives, participants will learn to understand the presence of diverse actors in the environment—human or nonhuman (a plant, a place, an object, a scent, etc.). Through deep listening, observation, and attentive exploration, collective statements drawn from the needs, relationships, and dynamics between the diverse actors will unfold.

🔗 REGISTER HERE: https://matterof.art/events/who-is-talking-in-the-garden-2-workshop-with-stonytellers

Capacity: 15 people
Free entry
Language accessibility: Czech and English.

OPENING: 13/08/2026, 18.00 | at Kvostka Gallery, free event within Soirée event 

Curators: Tereza Havlovicová & Ján Gajdušek 

Julius Reichel floods Kostka Gallery with several hundred kilograms of discarded textile, out of which a single monumental object rises, matter that holds the wear and the memory of many lives. The walls are lined with the artist’s calligraphic texts and paintings, which, as ever, mirror the chaos of a society oversaturated with information and disinformation and sliding into apathy. The title is no accident: the very name Julius Reichel is itself inherited, taken on from his great-grandfather, whose fate shows through the fabric like a trace of lineage. Here Reichel recycles matter, sign, and blood alike, an inheritance that cannot be cast off, only rewritten again and again in the visual and data smog of the present.

Tickets: 

100 CZK at bar MeetFactory or GoOut
50 CZK students, seniors, ZTP

The ticket is valid for both exhibition spaces. Tickets can also be purchased at the door.

For group discounts (over 10 people), guided tours of exhibitions or press accreditation, please contact pr/@/meetfactory/./cz

 

Artists: Kaspars Groševs, Karlīna Mežecka, Rūdolfs Štamers, Arnolds Andersons

Curated by: Žanete Liekīte

When: 05/08/2026, 18:00 – 21:00

Where: Krišjāņa Barona iela 30A, Centra rajons, Rīga, LV-1011, Latvia.

Ahead of the exhibition’s opening in September during Frieze Seoul, the team behind LOOPHOLE invites the public to Loophole Send-off to Seoul, a one-day exhibition and fundraising event. Taking place before the project travels to South Korea, where LOOPHOLE will open at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) Changdong in Seoul, the event offers an opportunity to directly support the exhibition through the purchase of artworks.

Works by Rūdolfs Štamers, Arnolds Andersons, Kaspars Groševs, and Karlīna Mežecka will be available during Loophole Send-off to Seoul.

LOOPHOLE brings together artists from Latvia, Lithuania, and South Korea. The title refers to those moments when the familiar route is no longer available and the only way forward is through another one. When the door is locked, you look for a window. If the window is locked too, you look for the ventilation shaft.  The exhibition explores loopholes not only in economic systems, but also in identity, the internet, sexuality, religion, social roles, and the everyday realities of artistic practice. At its centre is a site-specific installation by Latvian artist Rūdolfs Štamers, bringing together works by Arnolds Andersons (LV), Kaspars Groševs (LV), Īrisa Erbse (LV), Lee Eun-sol (KR), Dew Kim (KR), Karlīna Mežecka (LV), and Mykolas Valantinas (LT). Together, they create an immersive environment where different perspectives on adaptation, survival, and resistance intersect.

The exhibition LOOPHOLE is curated by Žanete Liekīte (LV) and Taeho Choi (KR).

EP. 76: Fighting the Moscow heritage – a conversation with the academic researcher and cultural historian Natasha Konradova.

Natasha began her career as a passionate journalist, travelling across remote regions of Russia and speaking with people. In 2014, following the annexation of Crimea, she and her family decided to leave Moscow and settled in Berlin.

Since 2022, she has been active in a human rights organisation, running various educational programs for youngsters, who want to learn about the unprocessed Soviet past through oral history and personal stories.

References:

Ural Mari. There Is No Death: https://uralmary.smerty.net/ural-mari-en/

Hacking the Iron Curtain by Natasha Konradova: https://uwpress.wisc.edu/Books/H/Hacking-the-Iron-Curtain

Natasha’s favourite (home) food: Wild Strawberries and Cloudberries

Recording, editing & translation: Patrycja Rozwora.

Mix & master: Jonas Kröper.

LISTEN THE CONVERSATION HERE.

On July 30 at 18:30, the DCCC cinema hall will host a screening of “Rave ON,” a rave odyssey filmed at Berlin parties.

escribed as a “love letter” to Berlin’s club scene and culture, the film was shot during actual parties. The directors’ main goal was to bring the raw, authentic atmosphere of a club night to the big screen as realistically as possible.

The plot centers on Cosmo, a producer and musician who, under the weight of life circumstances, stepped away from the Berlin electronic scene and is now experiencing a creative crisis. However, he is determined to get a second chance and make his comeback.

For the first time in a long while, Cosmo records a new album and aims to pass it on to a legendary DJ who once shaped his sound. Amidst the chaos of beats, altered states, and the endless labyrinths of the club, the night transforms from a party into an emotional journey through memories, doubts, and a fragile hope for a new beginning.

*18+

Duration: 85 min.

Language: Ukrainian

Tickets (150 UAH)

1st floor, Cinema Hall.

Forms of Friendship – guided tour through works from the Collection of NET and Akumulatory 2 Gallery.

Curatorial team: Jarosław Kozłowski, Luiza Kempińska

The NET Manifesto, written in 1971 by Jarosław Kozłowski and Andrzej Kostołowski, proposed the free exchange of ideas, concepts, projects, texts, and other forms of artistic expression outside the official art circuit. Sent to a mailing list of people in over thirty countries, it crossed the borders of the Cold War order. The first reception of NET took place in early 1972 in a private flat in Poznań, but it was interrupted by a raid by the Security Service.

The Akumulatory 2 Gallery, founded by Jarosław Kozłowski with a group of Poznań art‑history students in 1972 in defiance of the restrictions imposed by the authorities, was both a continuation and an extension of that idea. Lacking institutional backing, it was housed in the Akumulatory student club at 7 Zwierzyniecka Street in Poznań. From 1981, it was co‑run by Hanna Łuczak. Akumulatory 2 served as a space for presenting diverse artistic approaches and contemporary art from around the world, without any fixed programme. Over the gallery’s nineteen years of operation, nearly two hundred events — exhibitions, performances, actions, and lectures — were organised. All were run on a voluntary basis and resulted from contacts not mediated by any institution.

The conceptual artist Goran Đorđević aptly described this network of relationships in a remark made during a discussion about informal artistic circles: “The history of contemporary art is a history of friendship.”[1]This idea is also taken up by Bojana Pejić, an art historian and curator, in the essay “A Politics of Friendship (Remembered),” published in the volume After Piotr Piotrowski: Art, Democracy and Friendship. The reference is particularly significant because NET and the collaborative activities within the Akumulatory 2 Gallery repeatedly figure in the later writings of Piotr Piotrowski, the historian of Central and Eastern European art.

Friendship, a recurring theme in writings about the art of this region, is for Pejić partly a methodological category: one way of practising art history. She treats it as an intellectual practice grounded in discussion and exchange, non‑competitive debate, mutual reading, and the interplay of interpretations. It also involves invoking views and reinterpreting them with the awareness that they are tools for further thinking, allowing one to correct or supplement one’s own perspective. Friendship, in Pejić’s account, is finally a non‑hierarchical relationship that recognises differences of position without turning them into a rule of subordination. This stance intertwines with Piotrowski’s proposal: a call for a horizontal history of art that does not replicate the hierarchy of centre and periphery.

Pejić draws her understanding of friendship as an asymmetrical relationship from Jacques Derrida’s The Politics of Friendship. For the philosopher, the figure of friendship is the apostrophe – an address toward someone whose presence is not certain and who may only yet become its recipient. Similarly, the NET manifesto did not find a ready-made community, but rather created the possibility of its coming into being. Friendship in this sense is never immediately given and reveals itself in anticipation. It constitutes a relationship stretched between addressing, sending and receiving; between the one who writes and the one who may never reply. As a promise, it always remains somewhat in the future, yet is at the same time linked to the past, to what has been left unsaid and can no longer be said, and to the replies that come too late or do not come at all.

The reception of NET thus involved numerous intermediaries who might be described as “third readers”. Some of them — for example the Security Service officers who developed the film from a camera seized during the first NET reception to inspect its contents, or the censors who seized parcels and works of art — entered this circulation against the sender’s wishes. As the American artist Emmett Williams recalled, “My arrival in Poland cost the local customs inspector the stamping of every sheet of paper. While these delicate rice papers were stamped on the reverse, the stamp could also be seen on the front. Thus, traces from Poland overlapped with traces from Japan.” The objects themselves – letters, envelopes, printed matter, and negatives – also acted as intermediaries. Their materiality, the risk of interception, access to printing materials, and the costs of postage all helped determine what could occur within the network. Today, however, those who treat NET as an ongoing obligation to respond – renewed through successive readings and work with the archive — enter this circulation in a different way.

Responding is also bound up with responsibility. We respond, first and foremost, to someone or something; we also respond for ourselves, for someone else or for something; and finally, we respond before someone or something. All three senses find material expression within NET. To respond for someone [odpowiadać za] is to sign your name, give an address, and help build the network. To respond to someone [odpowiadać komuś] is to collect a letter, return a work, pass on a contact, or take part in an exchange initiated by another’s invitation. To respond before someone [odpowiadać przed] is to enter into a relationship with the prevailing order and open it up – breaching it by joining a non‑hierarchical circulation.

Such an understanding of responsibility found its fullest practical expression in the Akumulatory 2 Gallery, described as “a unique forum dedicated to art,” in which “what happens in art determines what the gallery is”.[3] In practice, to be responsible before someone meant to be responsible for what occurs in art, rather than for an institution or the market order. In this context, non‑institutionality was linked to an active rejection of certain functions a gallery might perform in relation to art. It was intended to be “just a space,” and a flexible one at that – one adapting to various, often conflicting, viewpoints.

This understanding of the gallery’s role led to an almost complete rejection of group exhibitions. Over the Akumulatory 2 Gallery’s years of activity only a handful of group shows took place, and their very titles – such as Prywatne poglądy [Private Views, 1978] and Indywidualne mitologie [Individual Mythologies, 1980] – indicate that the idea of collectivity as a shared programme was alien to the Gallery. The exhibition Formy przyjaźni [Forms of Friendship], whose collective character derives from the very nature of the collection bequeathed to the Arsenał Municipal Gallery by Jarosław Kozłowski, continues this stance. It comprises works selected from a much larger whole and, in presenting them together, does not attempt to reconcile them.

Luiza Kempińska

Artists:

Eric Andersen / Angelo de Aquino / Imre Bak / Andrzej Bereziański / Joseph Beuys / Włodzimierz Borowski / Natalia Brandt / Natalia Brodacka / Victor Burgin / William S. Burroughs / Giuseppe Chiari / Henri Chopin / Carlfriedrich Claus / COUM Transmissions (Cosey Fanni Tutti, Genesis P-Orridge) / Artur Cravan / Hanne Darboven / Mirtha Dermisache / Andrzej Dłużniewski / Stanisław Dróżdż / Gilbert & George / Wojciech Gorączniak / Tom J. Gramse / Peter Mandrup Hansen / Gerard Hemsworth / Geoffrey Hendricks / Margrit Kahl / Victor Kalinosi Mutale / Koji Kamoji / Pierre Keller / J.H. Kocman / Akira Komoto / Andrzej Kostołowski / Jarosław Kozłowski / Shigeko Kubota / Richard Long / Jerzy Ludwiński / Hanna Łuczak / George Maciunas / Piotr Macha / Inge Mahn / Andrzej Matuszewski / Joan Matthews / Yutaka Matsuzawa / Maryna Mazur / Ian McKeever / Yoko Ono / Géza Perneczky / Paweł Polus / Jerzy Rosołowicz / Ralf Samens / Mieko Shiomi / Mikołaj Smoczyński / Petr Štembera / Kishio Suga / Jarosław Szelest / Amikam Toren / Endre Tót / David Troostwyk / János Urbán / Ben Vautier / Franz Erhard Walther / Robert Watts / Lawrence Weiner / Emmett Williams / Krzysztof Wodiczko / Horacio Zabala.