As part of The Big Green project, artist residencies by Anna Siekierska and Portuguese artist José Jesus took place in Lower Silesia. The residencies marked the beginning of an almost year-long process of developing new artworks addressing sustainability and environmental protection.

Both artists spent part of their residencies in Gorzanów, taking part in Retrat, a project by the Art Transparent Foundation — a decentralised event combining contemporary art, ecological reflection, engagement with local heritage, and encounters with residents of the region.

The next stage of each residency unfolded in a different context within Lower Silesia. José Jesus spent a total of one week in Wrocław, where he explored the local ecosystem, with particular attention to the urban environment and its social and cultural contexts. Anna Siekierska, meanwhile, worked at Ptasia Dolina – the Sudeten Seed House, further developing her interest in the relationships between art, landscape, ecology, and local forms of environmental knowledge.

The residencies were conceived not as self-contained studio stays, but as research processes rooted in specific places, encounters, and experiences of the region. Gorzanów, Wrocław, and Ptasia Dolina became spaces of observation, exchange, and experimentation for the artists, while the experiences gathered during their stays will serve as a starting point for the creation of new artworks.

The resulting works will be presented for the first time during the next edition of the SURVIVAL Art Review in June 2027. In this way, the residencies in Lower Silesia will become part of a longer artistic process, connecting local experience with the international perspective of The Big Green project.

José Jesus

José Jesus (Faro, 1988) holds a Master’s degree in Multimedia Art from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon (FBAUL).  Works as an artist, musician and producer.

Since 2009 develops work mainly in installation and sound/music. Has been part of artists’ collectives and organisations such as Alfaia or 289. 

His practice embraces multiple disciplines, combining them. In his works, digital imagery, sound, materiality and organic processes converge.

Taking a critical look at the relationship between the human and the more-than-human, José Jesus presents objects drawn from a fictionalised anthropology. These objects and symbols allude to the occupation of territory, be it terrestrial or spatial, blending elements of the ancestral and the futuristic, leading us to encounter the heterotopia of the places occupied by humanity.

Anna Siekierska

Anna Siekierska is a sculptor, academic, cyclist, and activist working to protect old-growth forests. She is the author and co-author of numerous public-space installations, socially engaged projects, and artistic actions aimed at fostering greater sensitivity towards the lives of other beings.

Her practice operates at the intersection of art, activism, and science, exploring artistic research and embodied knowledge. She combines a range of media — primarily sculpture, photography, film, drawing, objects, and text — in transdisciplinary installations.

Her work focuses on the complex network of relationships between humans and the more-than-human world. Through art, she investigates possible pathways and develops scenarios towards a society based on respect for the Earth’s other inhabitants.

She continuously develops her craft skills, including carpentry, which she learns through collaborative building projects that also serve to create alternative networks of support and knowledge exchange. An important part of her practice is leading artistic workshops and walks for young people and adults.

She spends a great deal of time in various thickets and wetlands.