Yara Mekawei and Agnieszka Kozłowska

Yara Mekawei
Wish you were ear

Yara Mekawei is interested in the philosophy of architecture, history, and literature. Her work is based on sound as a tool of vision; the philosophy of composition is shaped by sophisticated practices that convey messages of conceptual dimension to the public. She will speak about her sound practicing, transacting from the image to the sound, transforming the digital images to sound, seeing the soundtracks. Mekawei uses the optical transfer from the musical conversation, transferring the sound waves to visual forms.

Yara Mekawei is a Cairo-based electronic music composer and sound artist. A prolific artist and scholar, Mekawei’s sonic bricolages draw inspiration from the flow of urban centers, and the infrastructure of cities. She follows her projects through a research point of uniting her work to the work of the other. In her work, she shows an intangible aspect of her personality that exposes the femininity in an East African society.

https://yaramekawei.wixsite.com/yaramekawei/resume

Agnieszka Kozłowska
Carved by light: photograph as a direct physical trace

The presentation will give an overview of Kozłowska’s practice, which stems from experiments in the medium of photography and is driven by a fascination with the moment of photographic exposure, when a tangible link is formed between the light-sensitive surface and the physical world. She continuously researches unconventional light-sensitive materials that allow her to make unique photographic artefacts directly in the camera, without the need for printing or other post-production processes. Carrying a self-constructed 10×8in. camera, she performs carefully planned solitary walks across uninhabited landscapes to make photographic exposures that are several hours long.

Agnieszka Kozłowska (*1985) is a Polish artist and researcher whose practice combines performative engagement with remote landscapes and the radical understanding of photography as a mechanism for creating unique physical traces rather than reproducible images. She earned her PhD from Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, and BA and MA from University for the Creative Arts, Rochester, United Kingdom. She has exhibited in Kunsthaus Zug, Switzerland, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, NAIRS Contemporary Art Center , Scuol , Switzerland , Fotogalleriet, Oslo, Kunstmuseum Chur, Switzerland, among others. She is a laureate of Forecast mentoring programme 2015/2016.

The presentation is possible thanks to the Artists-in-Residence program of the Austrian Federal Chancellery and KulturKontakt Austria.