Curated by MFA candidate Justyna Wąsik, this program presents short films, sculptures and sound works that use drift as an editing principle and open onto a mode of contemplation. 

The program includes artists Demetrius Lewis, Justyna Wąsik with Krzysztof Kaczmarek & Łukasz Jastrubczak, Larsa Kena, Maissa Maatouk, Meesh Kislyakov, Priya Deb.

ABOUT

Justyna Wąsik works across film, sound & practices of everyday life. She created the post-artistic festival Polish Soundtrack with Krzysztof Kaczmarek & Łukasz Jastrubczak. Her works were featured at MESS Festival in Sarajevo, Edinburgh Fringe, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Dream Factory in Ostrava. Author of lyrics for Boring Drug & cli-fi, sonic love story of Lake Michigan & Baltic Sea.

Krzysztof Kaczmarek is a film director and visual artist. His last film “Pawel and Wawel” was awarded at the Marseille Festival and featured at “First Look” in New York, Mar Del Plata in Argentina, Transcinema Festival in Peru, Underdox in Munich. His works were exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, The MAK Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna.

Łukasz Jastrubczak is a visual artist and experimental musician, lecturer and vice dean of the Media Art Department in the Academy of Art in Szczecin. He had solo exhibitions at among others – Art in General in New York, Sabot Gallery in Cluj- Napoca, Bunkier Sztuki in Cracow. His works were presented at Whitechapel Gallery in London, The Images Festival in Toronto or Kino Arsenal in Berlin.

Demetrius Lewis was born in Birmingham, Alabama, has screened at festivals like the Atlanta Film Festival, and Prismatic Ground. He uses cinema as a stage to track how interactions between landscape, technology, labor, and power; speculating on responses to ideas of place and the various ecologies that underpin them.

Larsa Kena (b. 1999) is an Assyrian artist based in Chicago. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is an MFA candidate at the University of Illinois Chicago. She examines material culture, memory, and displacement through painting and sculpture. She performed in Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind at MCA Chicago; exhibited in Elemental Impact at Epiphany Center for the Arts.

Maissa Maatouk is an artist based in Chicago and Beirut. Her current projects explore perception shaped by the Lebanese collapse and war. She was a 2019 fellow in Ashkal Alwan’s Home Workspace Program in Beirut and a resident at the Junge Akademie (Akademie der Künste, 2022), Saradar Foundation (2023), and Akademie Schloss Solitude (2023). Her works were shown in Lebanon, USA, Germany, Austria, Spain and France.

Meesh Kislyakov is a filmmaker based in Chicago. Currently an MFA candidate at UIC, she holds a BA from the University of Virginia. Her films have been selected to screen at the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, Mayfield Art Space, Virginia Film Festival, A/R/TOGRAFICA (Spain), Labocine, Locomoción Experimental Animation Festival (CDMX), Millennium Film Workshop, and Working Room Richmond.

Priya Deb (b. 1994, India) works across painting, fibre, sculpture, and moving images. She is currently pursuing an MFA at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her work has been presented at The Hyde Park Art Center, Agitator Gallery and SAIC Galleries in Chicago, and Hermit Gallery in Taipei. She was the 2025 Loretta Grellner Scholar at the Ox Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency (MI).