16th edition WROCŁAW // 15-23.09.2023

Avant Art Festival has been contributing to the Polish independent culture scene for 16 years, annually inviting non-mainstream artists of the avant-garde and experimental scene from all over the world. As artistic curators, we are attracted not only by music, but also by painting, street art, installations, film, video art, performance, and in fact by the lack of boundaries in the interpenetration of different art disciplines. The aim of the festival is to present the latest trends in contemporary art, promote Polish artists and integrate artists from all over the world.

For more than a decade, Avant Art as a foundation and festival has been establishing contacts and cooperation with publishers, organisers and organisations from all over the world, creating and taking part in many foreign projects. As a result, artists from non-obvious corners of the world visit the festival cities – in 2022 we realised a showcase by Ugandan label Hakuna Kulala, in 2023 there will be guests from Japan and Indonesia, among others. We would like to strongly emphasise that the festival relies on a careful, long and thoughtful curatorial process, so that there are no random situations in the festival programme.

We are trying to make Avant’s characteristic feature be its multidisciplinarity and its readiness (increasingly) to address difficult, complex and very important topics in the world of culture . Thanks to this, this year’s edition will include, among others, a series of meetings in Wrocław, Poznań and Warsaw entitled “Neocolonialism – oh no ! As a result, this year’s edition will include a series of meetings in Wrocław, Poznań and Warsaw entitled “Neo-colonialism – oh no!”, during which Polish publishers, experts and promoters of avant-garde music from Africa will speak. We are also developing our cooperation with the New Horizons Cinema, thanks to which the existing formula of reviewing documentary films about music will be additionally supplemented with meetings with people connected to film production.

The event is co-financed by the City of Wrocław.

Events realised within the project In Between Norway & Poland / Culture are financed by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway under the Norwegian and EEA Funds for l. 2014 – 2021 (Culture Programme, Measure 2 “Improving access to culture and the arts”).

For more information on the Norwegian and EEA Funds, see www.eeagrants.org.