Mycorrhiza. 9. Best Media Arts Graduation Projects Competition

This year’s exhibition of the 9th Best Media Arts Graduation Projects Competition continues the collaboration between eight universities with diverse models of media art education in Poland.

The exhibition is also one of the main components of the Biennale WRO 2023 Treści wymienialne / Fungible Content. In Studio BWA Wrocław, we will see works inspired by the structure of mycelium, biomorphic systems and psychedelic and dreamy video realisations.

This year, the exhibition of the 9th Best Media Arts Graduation Projects Competition returns to Studio BWA Wrocław. The aim of the project is to share the experience of this field of study at public art academies in Krakow, Warsaw, Szczecin, Łódź, Katowice, Poznań, Gdańsk and Wrocław, as well as to promote female and male graduates. This year’s exhibition will be titled Mycorrhiza.

Mycorrhiza in nature are mycelial hyphae that live in symbiosis with plant roots and increase the resistance of plants to disease. This process can be understood as both a communication strategy and a survival model – a symbiosis relationship between the faunal and fungi worlds.

on the one hand, the title refers to the narrative of the Competition, at the heart of which is a model of contest. By building the exhibition and the relationships between the participants in the exhibition in the context of their works, we seek to highlight the nature of cohabitation and collaboration in one space. On the other hand, the fungal component is evident in the works presented in the exhibition.

Cezary Wicher, curator of Mycorrhiza.

In Studio BWA Wrocław, we present realisations that refer to conceptualism (Klaudia Kasperska and Oleksandr Goliuk), which, despite digital technology, stand in opposition to the new-media tradition. These are installations clearly inspired by biomorphic systems. Dreamy and psychedelic video realisations (Jan Kowal, Piotr Michalski and Franek Warzywa) are presented amidst a writhing and twisted mycelium structure in which ‘unidentified drawing objects’ (Sonia Kujawa) circulate. In all of this, the glue of mycorrhiza’s fungal structure is the ways of understanding and experiencing the world, and the story of the calibration of our senses and the limitations of perception (Małgorzata Wrońska, Kacper Krajewski).

Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture, National Heritage from the Fund for the Promotion of Culture. Co-financed by the Municipality of Wrocław.