Weronika Zielińska-Klein (PL) is an artist-mother, researcher, and educator. In her practice, Zielińska explores different curatorial strategies in which the concepts of gift and hospitality play an essential role. In 2012 Zielińska established Upominki – a non-profit project space for art in Rotterdam. Working with Upominki (“gifts” in Polish) moved Zielińska’s research further toward the practice of exchange, while also asking about how to sustain a non-profit space. In 2019 Zielińska was appointed to lead the interdisciplinary department of Autonomous Practices at the Willem de Koning Academy in Rotterdam. Her current research explores the intersections of autonomy, critical self-organization, and mothering, all three as practices – within the larger understanding of art as a means for cultural production. Zielińska is a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Humanities Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM).
THE STORIES WE (DON’T) SHARE
In this workshop, participants come together to share personal anecdotes that made them reflect on their role(s) as an artist-mother (parent) in the current socio-political context and come up with short- and long-term action items and recommendations that can be implemented in their immediate work environment; organizations, networks, institutions.
“Rhubarb crumble with footnotes (35 persons)” during anual WdKA Research Day
A day of conversations on doing research at WdKA during which I shared my current research project Matricentric feminism, critical self-organization, and autonomy (working title), and invited the public to collectively prep a rhubarb crumble. Here crumble was symbolic of a memory from my home(country), where we make baba or babka, a yeast cake stemming from the Proto-Slavic word for grandmother.
"In this Together" performative lecture during Learning from the Pandemic: Possibilities and Challenges for Mothers and Families
This interdisciplinary conference brought together scholars, practitioners, and activists to explore the impact of the pandemic on mothers and families around the world while considering strategies for the post-COVID climb-out. Combining multidisciplinary and intersectional perspective, it examined the impact of the pandemic on mothers’ wellbeing, and care and wage labour in the context of employment, schooling, resettlement, and family relationships.
Feminist Viennese Coffee House
Feminist Viennese Coffee House is a series of online conversations with women artists and curators connecting Amsterdam, Paris, Maryland, Newton Kansas, Graz, Todmorden West Yorkshire, Rotterdam, Tel Aviv, and Berlin. During the #11 encounter, I gave a presentation about my current research on Matricentric feminism, critical self-organization, and autonomy (working title) and guided the conversation on motherhood studies as discourse non-existent in Dutch art education institutions.
Work-Life Balance, Strategies to divert Neoliberalism
“Galería Metropolitana is spacious and children friendly with easy access for wheelchairs and strollers. By taking my family on a residency I meant to productively deal with the struggle of balance –between my work and life– without undermining one from another. By making the existing precarious conditions explicit, I used them as opportunities for creating new meanings. Shaped by trust and generosity not by distant prejudices, this project’s main objective was spontaneity and no high expectatio