VISITING ARTISTS

Aleksandra Wałaszek & Samuel Stevens

Know what you want to know *

SPRING 2026 Residency at Compound Yellow

New works trace how accidents and external forces become part of personal realities. Landscapes and bodies mutate into algorithmic instructions – mediated or lived, aligned to shifting social logics, with reality scaled to fit. The artists ask through collage and video, weaving and carving: What is a promise never kept, an armistice of gazes, an ignored apology? The exhibition is informed by times of unrest, and unseen forces; they consider that an invitation to exit requires rehearsing the welcome again.

Aleksandra Wałaszek received an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2024) and an MA in Media Arts from the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław (2011). She is a recent recipient of the Fulbright Graduate Student Award, and ReSide Award. Her works have been exhibited nationally and internationally at various venues, and has participated in artist residencies. Her practice examines the coexistence of beauty and crudeness, hospitality and hostility, references architecture, and sources archives.

Samuel Stevens holds an MFA in Sculpture from the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Art and Design, Wrocław (2020) and a BFA in Painting from the Kansas City Art Institute (2016). He is the co-founder, with Wałaszek, of Forma Otwarta, an artist-run space in Oleśnica, Poland, where he curates exhibitions and collaborative projects. His practice embraces site-specificity and experimental making, weaving together elements of craft, architecture, and ephemeral encounters to reimagine our relationship to space and objects.

Co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.

*This project was realized within the frame of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute’s ReSide program.

Works on display - March 07-April 04

Saturday 2pm to 6pm and by appointment

Keeley Haftner

“Tesselescence (Compound Yellow)”

Fall 2023 Residency at Compound Yellow

Keeley Haftner is a Saskatchewanian-Canadian artist based in the Netherlands whose artwork deals with garbage as a material and as a concept. She was born and raised on Treaty 6 territory on the traditional lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Dene, Dakota, Lakota, Nakota, and Métis nations, to which she and her ancestors are deeply indebted. Her work has been exhibited internationally in the US, Canada, and Europe at venues including Schering Stiftung (Berlin), the Art Institute of Chicago (USA), and Keramiekmuseum Princessehof (Netherlands). Haftner received her BFA from Mount Allison University (2011) and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Fiber and Material Studies (2016). She was recently long-listed for Canada’s prestigious Sobey Art Award (2023).

Haftner has received and been short-listed for various grants, awards, and public commissions from organizations including BMO Financial Group’s 1st Art! Art Competition (2011), the Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramics (2021), and the University of Chicago’s Arts, Science & Culture Initiative Collaboration Grant (2015-16). She has participated in many residencies, including the European Ceramic Workcentre (NL), Vermont Studio Center (USA), Struts & Faucet Media Arts Centre (CA), and SÍM (IS). Haftner is the founder of Street Meet public art festival, Saskatoon (2013-2017), and one of the founders and curators of Public Access gallery, Chicago (2016-2018). She has given workshops and talks at galleries, universities, conferences and festivals including Transmediale (DE), Currents International New Media Festival (Santa Fe), and Open Engagement at the Queen’s Museum (NYC). Haftner produced site-specific work for the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Terrain Biennial (2021), and received solo presentations of her work for This Art Fair, Amsterdam (2021/22). Selected publications include the 3D Additivist Cookbook (2016), the BAKSTEEN | BRICK exhibition catalogue at Kunsthal KAdE (2022), and Tesselescence and the Rhombillion Effect (Open Studio, 2019). Haftner is a 2018 and 2021 recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Grant, and a Hague Artist with Stroom (NL).