Maryan Besaga

GRAPHIC DIALOGUES

Between 2008 and 2018, organising and co-organising projects centred on graphic art became an important part of my work in international cooperation. These events did not form a single project under one fixed title. Rather, they grew into a network of exhibitions, plein-air workshops, creative meetings, lectures, and masterclasses that gradually connected Lviv with art communities across Poland.

I wanted to present the range of graphic art, from traditional printmaking, lithography, and bookplates to contemporary individual practices. Just as important was the chance to compare different artistic schools: to see how the same technique develops in different academic settings, and how an artist’s individual way of thinking is always present behind the technique.

Among the first initiatives were international graphic art meetings and the “Harenda: Kraków — Łódź — Lviv — Wrocław” project in 2008–2009. Work created during the workshops was later shown in Lviv and at partner academies. This pattern — meeting → working together → exhibition → further exchange — would recur in many subsequent international initiatives.

The projects gradually became more varied. In 2011, I organised the “Exlibris” (Gliwice) exhibition in Lviv, bringing together around 700 works. In the years that followed, Lviv hosted exhibitions of contemporary Polish graphic art, works by professors from the art academies in Warsaw and Kraków, presentations of lithography by professors from the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, and solo and group projects by faculty members of partner institutions.

Student activities developed alongside these exhibitions. Photography and graphic art workshops, as well as student exhibitions in Lviv and Łódź, gave young artists the opportunity to show their work beyond their home academies and to encounter other educational and creative environments firsthand.

A particularly interesting continuation of this work was “Let’s Give the World Form”, developed in cooperation with the Institute of Art in Cieszyn, the University of Silesia, and the Public Library in Gliwice. It extended beyond an exhibition: alongside the displays, the project offered masterclasses and training sessions for LNAA students, as well as for children and young people in Lviv’s schools and libraries. In 2018, this dialogue continued with the exhibition “Cieszyn — Lviv: Graphic Journeys.”

Together, these events gradually formed what I think of as an archive of graphic dialogues. My role varied — organiser, co-organiser, coordinator, or curator — but the guiding principle remained the same: to create opportunities for artists from different communities to meet directly.

I was interested in more than presenting finished works. I wanted to bring different schools, techniques, generations, and ways of thinking into view; to give students the chance to see work by professors and artists from other academies, and teachers the chance to engage in professional dialogue with their colleagues.

Over time, I became increasingly convinced that international artistic exchange matters most when something continues after an exhibition: a new contact, another workshop, a shared studio, a student exchange, or a new project. For me, graphic art became more than an art form. It was one of my first means of building an international professional dialogue.