About

STATUS is an exchange project that brings together artists and cultural workers with a common goal to analyze the conditions of artistic practice and give visibility to the people who conduct it in today’s world. Moreover, it encourages them to see their civil and political potential in initiating change.

The project STATUS started in 2018 with gathering artists and cultural workers from Belarus and Sweden in order to find relevant and shared topics on the importance and capacity of artists in making change in society. 

The STATUS project was created by the joint coordination of Swedish and Belarusian partners: Konstepidemin in Gothenburg and gallery KX in Brest. Collaborations and participators in the project are exclusively non-governmental organizations and freelance cultural workers.

STATUS I 2018-20 was a collective research project in which the research was conducted predominantly by participants based in Belarus and Sweden. During their time in the project, artistic research groups developed different topics under a general framework. In this iteration of the STATUS project, the research groups created collaborative work within the frame of  Hidden Life, Heritagization, and (non)work.

The outcome of STATUS I was presented in 2020 as exhibitions and a book Artistic Practice And Social Change. Observations From Sweden And Belarus. 

STATUS II 2020-22 had a challenging start in the autumn of 2020 with the post-election protests and repressions of cultural workers in Belarus. The project turned out to be a Residency program within the international program at Konstepidemin. Through an open call, six Belarusian artists were offered a 2-month stay. During the residency time they also got a Swedish companion – an artist matching in personal expression. Later, a residency program for two performance collaborations was set up, joining small companies with similar spheres of interest. 

The STATUS online platform statusproject.net is a tool that makes produced knowledge visible and available to the broader public and professionals globally. The content of the platform is a collection of contributions from projects participants and a place for analytics, interviews, event reports, and inputs of other fellow professionals who work within the field and also research topics raised within STATUS in their independent practice.