Vala T. Foltyn - Emergency Fellowship 2020/21

Through the support of the Onassis ΑiR Emergency Fellowship, I will delve further into the research on queering the archives and collecting, assembling and digitizing the prolific documentation of “Lamella - the house of queer arts”. Lamella was a co-living space in 100 years-old villa in Kraków (Poland), that functioned as a think-tank for alternative notions of cultural production and sheltered local and international queer cοmmunity. I have been living and working in this house as an artist, activist and community leader, until it was shut down in 2018. After the eviction took place, notions of loss, death, grief, anger and mourning became the major area of study in my practices of choreographing rituals, installations and poetic writings. The social and political changes in my home country and violence towards trans and queer peοple forced me to search for a safe refuge in other places to continue working as an artist and researcher.