Art Moves 2024
17th International Festival of Art on Billboards
September 1 – October 2, Toruń, Poland

In 2024 year, the festival was organised in Toruń for the seventh time. Unfortunately, still in a truncated and crisis form due to the war, pandemic and the resulting economic crisis that has hit hard culture and art. Despite this, we do not give up, and we have prepared a huge chunk of visual reflections created by artists from all over the world. They concern a very important issue “ To become dependent or independent? To swim with or against the tide?”. Like every year, during the festival, the city space of Toruń show the works of talented debutants and renowned international artists.

Every time has its challenges and it is impossible to escape them. Despite the fact that we as humanity in many respects solved a range of different problems faced by our ancestors, with the development of civilisation and technology they have been replaced with new challenges that we must face. Since a large part of global society is not able to cope with their own fears and dark thoughts, how can we cope with these new challenges? Instead of taking the bull by the horn and making a real effort to find creative solutions, we often prefer someone else to resolve the problems. Instead of making decisions for ourselves, we prefer other people to make decisions for us, instead of acting, we escape, instead of swimming against the tide, we swim with the tide. How can we break this deadlock, give up pessimism and malaise, and find the courage and energy within us (and our communities) to take action and build a more positive reality? How can we regain self-agency and stop believing that only artificial intelligence, governments or other people are able to resolve our problems? How can we stop resorting to various kinds of addictions: social media, technologies or psychoactive substances? How can we regain independent and critical thinking, as well as the will to make decisions about our own life and the shape of reality? How can we stop escaping and face up to reality? How can we avoid being dependent? How can we become independent and self-manageable? How can we create a common better future on our Planet?

As always, the festival consists of a competition phase and then a presentation of the artists invited by the organisers. The best works were presented on billboards. Leitmotifs of our festivals always correspond with social processes and phenomena that shape the contemporary world. They stem from a deep sociological, psychological and philosophical reflection, and express our care of the shape of reality we are living in. International artists are largely interested in the competition and festival, which indicates the mesmerising potential of the idea of this event, and of public space that serves for deep reflections and social communication.

This year works relate to the leitmotiv of the entire event: “To become dependent or independent? To swim with or against the tide?” 344 artists from 62 countries entered the contest “What shift in our perspective do we need to see the bright side of reality, not just the dark one?”. We received 653 artworks from Europe, Africa, North and South America, Australia and Asia!

The jury panel composed of artists and curators, including:
Adam Niklewicz / artist / North Haven, Connecticut, USA
Mark Titchner / artist / London, Great Britain
Małgorzata Augustyniak / art historian, representative of the Management Board of AMS SA / Warsaw, Poland
Joanna Górska / artist, curator, Art Moves Festival art director/ Toruń, Poland
selected 6 most interesting projects which will be exhibited on billboards during the Art Moves Festival 2024.

Here is the list of honoured artists:

Maja Wąż / Poland
Yehying Yan / Malaysia
Grzegorz Myćka / Poland
Mateusz Domeradzki / Poland
Wojciech Mazur / Poland
Ying-Hsiu, Chen i Hsiang-Ying, Chen / Taiwan

The Main Award of 4000 PLN receives Maja Wąż from Poland.

In this edition of the festival, we were exhibited the works by 36 artists from 11 countries:
The show on the billboards, citylightes and on the LED screen:

Maja Wąż / Poland
Yehying Yan / Malaysia
Grzegorz Myćka / Poland
Mateusz Domeradzki / Poland
Wojciech Mazur / Poland
Ying-Hsiu, Chen i Hsiang-Ying, Chen / Taiwan
Mark Titchner / Great Britain
Joanna Górska (Galeria Rusz) / Poland
Rafał Góralski (Galeria Rusz) / Poland
Nikodem Pręgowski / Poland
Piotr Florianowicz / Poland
Jie-Fei Yang / Taiwan
Jakub Turczyński / Poland

The works of the following artists will be presented in the special show, on the pillar:

Agnieszka Bendyk / Poland
Aleksandra Klatka / Poland
Diana Kopeć / Poland
Dawid Celek / Poland / Germany
Gabriela Moskal / Poland
Chen Goyen / Taiwan
Justyna Markiewicz / Poland
Kai Huang / China
Lex Drewinski / Poland / Germany
Ling Karas i Zuo Biao / Hong Kong
Łukasz Zwolan / Poland
Maria Emilewicz / Poland
Jerzy Dobrzyniecki / Polska
Michael Mayevsky (Misha) / Ukraine
Michał Łącki / Poland
Peng Wang / Hong Kong
Sayyed Mehran Zare / Iran
Wenfeng / China
Wenlong Zhang / Chiny
Xiz Franco González (D’aqeloutre) / Spain
Zlatan Dryanov / Bulgaria
Peng Zuo Biao / Hong Kong

Art Moves Festival was held under the honorary patronage of Piotr Całbecki, Marshal of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Region and Paweł Gulewski, President of Toruń

The festival has been co-funded by the Local Authorities of Kujawsko-Pomorskie Region and Toruń Municipality