Easttopics

This interview took place within the framework of the Unschool of Curating, held in Timișoara and Cluj, Romania, between 19 – 26 June, 2026, organized by Art Encounters Foundation and Cluj Cultural Center. This program, now in its 8th edition, is developed collaboratively by the two organizations to strengthen curatorial networks in Romania and internationally. The Unschool of Curating focuses on informal methodologies, alternative pedagogies, and practice-led curatorial discourse. Antonia Alampi was invited this year to conduct this school in the spirit of her inspiring work as a curator, cultural organizer, and Director of Spore Initiative in Berlin.

On Monday, the 7th edition of the East Call Curatorial Residency started. ✨
This intensive 2-week program brings together emerging curators to explore the contemporary art scenes of Hungary and Slovenia within a broader regional context. Through studio visits, workshops, exhibitions, and conversations with leading art professionals in Budapest and Ljubljana, participants will dive into curatorial practices, institutional frameworks, and the evolving role of curators today.
Stay tuned as we follow this year’s residents on their journey 👀

At the 61st Venice Biennale, the Polish Pavilion’s Liquid Tongues explores alternative forms of communication, collective listening, and coexistence across human and more-than-human worlds. In conversation with curators Ewa Chomicka and Jolanta Woszczenko, we discussed Deaf culture, underwater communication, geopolitical realities, and the political potential of attentiveness itself. Moving between activism and poetic immersion, the pavilion challenges dominant linguistic and social hierarchies while imagining new forms of community in a world marked by crisis, exclusion, and fragmentation.

Adelina Luft sees the first-ever Moldova Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale not simply as a national debut, but as a political and emotional act of resistance. In conversation with us, the curator reflects on Pavel Brăila’s On the Thousand and Second Night—an installation staged inside Venice’s Santa Veneranda chapel that confronts war, territorial violence, and the collapse of collective imagination through carpets, drone propellers, and sound. Luft speaks about the limits of the “Eastern European” label, the uneven visibility of artists outside Western institutional networks, and why Moldova’s presence at the Biennale matters in the current geopolitical climate. Rather than offering a direct political illustration, the pavilion proposes what she calls “an invitation to rewrite the narrative of the future”—a fragile but urgent space where unease and hope coexist.

Today, the 7th edition of the East Call Curatorial Residency kicks off ✨

This intensive 2-week program brings together emerging curators to explore the contemporary art scenes of Hungary and Slovenia within a broader regional context. Through studio visits, workshops, exhibitions, and conversations with leading art professionals in Budapest and Ljubljana, participants will dive into curatorial practices, institutional frameworks, and the evolving role of curators today.

Stay tuned as we follow this year’s residents on their journey 👀

The Easttopics team spoke with Natalia Sielewicz, curator of the Estonian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, featuring artist Merike Estna. The interview touches on the politics of waiting as an artistic form, the relationship between care and painting, the contradictions of Eastern European identity, and what it means to make art amid ongoing geopolitical and emotional crises.

Next week, the 7th edition of the East Call Curatorial Residency kicks off ✨

This intensive 2-week program brings together emerging curators to explore the contemporary art scenes of Hungary and Slovenia within a broader regional context. Through studio visits, workshops, exhibitions, and conversations with leading art professionals in Budapest and Ljubljana, participants will dive into curatorial practices, institutional frameworks, and the evolving role of curators today.
Stay tuned as we follow this year’s residents on their journey 👀

An Interview with Peter Sit, curator of the Czech and Slovak Pavilion

Next week, the 7th edition of the East Call Curatorial Residency kicks off ✨

This intensive 2-week program brings together emerging curators to explore the contemporary art scenes of Hungary and Slovenia within a broader regional context. Through studio visits, workshops, exhibitions, and conversations with leading art professionals in Budapest and Ljubljana, participants will dive into curatorial practices, institutional frameworks, and the evolving role of curators today.
Stay tuned as we follow this year’s residents on their journey 👀