View the online publication we released for the 20th anniversary of the painting competition Maľba.
Jury
visual artist
One of the best-known contemporary Croatian artists, highly regarded internationally. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts at Zagreb University and at Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Currently he lives and works in Zagreb. Systematic exploration of formalist principles is the core of David Maljković’s work. Although the initial impulse of each project is narrative, its dominant status is thoroughly and fundamentally altered and called into question by the diverse visual media and approaches that the artist uses (photography, video, sculpture, installation). The process of constructing the work, regulated by a set of formal principles, enciphers narratives and creates what the artist calls a new semantic logic. Almost all of Maljković’s works operate with historical and technological references, which evoke local and universal experiences. His themes, which remain open to the viewer’s interpretation, are above all the erosion of memory and the processes of its deformation.
David Maljković has had solo exhibitions at key world institutions, including The Renaissance Society in Chicago, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, GAMeC in Bergamo, CAC Vilnius, SculptureCenter in New York, Kunsthalle Basel, Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Secession in Vienna, Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, Whitechapel Gallery in London, CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain in Bordeaux and MoMA PS1 in New York.
His works have also been presented in Kunsthaus Bregenz, MAXXI in Rome, MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, The Power Plant in Toronto, WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels and Centre Pompidou in Paris. He has participated in many important international shows, including 11th Biennale in Gwangju, 56th Venice Biennale, La Triennale in Paris, 29th Biennale in São Paulo, 9th and 11th Istanbul Biennale, 4th Tirana Biennale and 5th Berlin Biennale. His works are part of the collections of Centre Pompidou in Paris, mumok in Vienna, Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, MoMA in New York, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and Tate in London.
collector, curator, artist and initiator of cultural projects
Collector of contemporary art, curator, artist and initiator of interdisciplinary cultural projects focusing on contemporary art, patronage, and international cultural exchange. Since 2005 he has been building the Borowik Collection, which Modern Painters Magazine and Artinfo.com have rated among the 50 most important collections of contemporary art in the world. He is active in collecting, curating, publishing and building institutions, with a particular focus on the contemporary art of Central and Eastern Europe, especially of the rising generation. In 2020, responding to the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, he initiated Polish Art NOW: a national movement supporting artists affected by the pandemic and creating new models of visibility and cooperation in the Polish art scene. In 2021 he founded the Borowik Foundation in Warsaw, an independent platform devoted to exhibitions, education, and international dialogue on contemporary art. The Foundation is based in the historic Avenarius House in the Saska Kępa district and has become a meeting place for artists, collectors, curators and institutions from all of Europe and elsewhere. Since 2022 Borowik has worked as curator of the printed edition of Vogue Polska’s Art Academy, an education programme created in partnership with BMW Polska, focusing on contemporary art and cultural discourse. He regularly publishes essays and curatorial texts exploring the relationship between art, society and contemporary cultural changes.
aesthetician, art historian, university teacher and curator
In 2006 – 2016 she studied art history, historiography and aesthetics at Masaryk University in Brno (her doctoral study focused on the theory of photography). Since 2012 she has worked in Olomouc Museum of Art – Central European Forum, where in 2019 – 2024 she led a specialised department. In 2018 – 2020 she worked in the Centre for Photographic Research at the AV ČR Institute of Art History. Since 2021 she has been departmental assistant at the Department of Art History in Palacký University. Her scholarly work is focused on European visual art of the 20th and 21st centuries, especially technical representations, methodology of art history and the analytical conception of aesthetics. She has co-edited thematic issues of the journals Umění (3/2022) and Espes (1/2019). Barbora Kundračíková is the author and co-organiser of international conferences and workshops focused on the relationship of photography and science, new media and institutional politics (Photo: Science, CEAD.space, RE:Senster etc.). She has prepared many exhibition and publication projects (Olomouc Museum of Art, Academia / Kunsthalle, Kant Publishers, Books & Pipes Publishing, etc.). She is a member of AICA, the international association of art critics.
art theorist
Currently works as departmental assistant in the Faculty of Humanities at Charles University in Prague. Her professional biography is unusually rich: she has taught in the Film and TV School at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU); she has curated the editions programme at Kunsthalle Bratislava and researched curating and publishing activity at SixtyEight Art Institute in Copenhagen. She has worked as a researcher, curator and project coordinator in the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) in Berlin. As a curator she has participated in the Secondary Archive project, an online platform devoted to the work of artists from Central and Eastern Europe.
Together with Kvet Nguyen, Denisa Tomková curated the first group exhibition of art of the Vietnamese diaspora in Slovakia: Nhớ: The Space Between One End and the Other in Kunsthalle Bratislava. She is a member of the international grouping Ecologies of Care, which is devoted to art and cultural production in the context of care and mutual dependence. In the past she worked in the reading and research group Social Reproduction in Art, Life, and Struggle at Edinburgh University, and as a research member of the project Comparing WE’s: Community, Cosmopolitanism, and Emancipation in a Global Context at Lisbon University.
She holds an MSc Degree in modern and contemporary history (history, curating and criticism) from Edinburgh University, and a PhD in visual culture from Aberdeen University. In her work she addresses the normative perception of the human body, aesthetic discrimination, and criticism of art institutions. She examines Roma cultural production, the contemporary art of the Vietnamese diaspora, and queer and crip aesthetics. Her latest research focuses on speculative and experimental approaches in contemporary art on the European semi-periphery, and the search for alternative perspectives and solutions for a hopeful future. She is editor of the anthology Putujúce koncepty / Wandering Concepts (Kunsthalle Bratislava, 2023) and author of the ground-breaking publication Empowering Aesthetics: Contemporary Art from Post-Socialist Central Europe (Bloomsbury, 2025).