What, How & for Whom / WHW launches its annual open call for WHW Akademija. The program for 2026 continues under the title Remember Freedom and is borrowed from a speech given by science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Award reception in 2014. More than ten years ago, she urged society to face up to the difficult times that were then on the horizon and have now arrived, and, in doing so, not to forget the freedom held by poets and artists - "the realists of a larger reality". 

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Applications for the eighth year of this tuition-free transdisciplinary study program are now invited. The programme is open to artists based anywhere while focusing on artistic practices primarily grounded in the Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe. The programme works with participants on new forms of self-determination based on critical reflection and curiosity, and supports this through encounters with artists, artworks, arts professionals, scholars, and practitioners from various disciplines which will be announced in April.

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Sebastian Cichocki serves as a resident professor in 2026. He is the Head of the Possible Art Studio – Postartistic Practices at the University of Arts in Poznań (UAP), Poland, and a senior curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (MSN). His curatorial projects include the 40th EVA International – Ireland's Biennial of Contemporary Art, 15th Biennale of Young Artists in Skopje, “The Postartistic Assembly” at the 14th Gwangju Biennale and “Primary Forms” at the 3rd Thailand Biennale in Chiang Rai. He is also a founding member of the Forum for the Future of Culture (Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw) and the Office for Postartistic Services - networks of art workers who contribute to pro-democratic and anti-authoritarian political struggles.

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In her hometown of Bihać, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the participants will work with Selma Selman. Her multidisciplinary practice includes performance, video, painting, and installation, often rooted in autobiographical narratives that confront social injustice, gender-based violence, and systemic discrimination. Selma Selman’s works have been exhibited at documenta fifteen, the Venice Biennale, Autostrada Biennale, Manifesta 14, Gropius Bau, Stedelijk Museum, Schirn Kunsthalle, MoMA PS1, Istanbul Biennial. Selman is the founder of the Get the Heck to School foundation, which supports Roma girls facing poverty and marginalisation.

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Thematically and methodologically, the programme, just as in 2025, addresses questions that seem to be in opposition - poetry and borders. Together with the participants, we will investigate physical and mental borderlands, and the role they have performed historically and in the present. What makes this pertinent here today, when the empire normalizes extreme violence outside of its core, is that the borderlands of Europe, such as Croatia, offer a unique perspective to consider the formation of whiteness and its strategies of inclusion and exclusion. Borders have become places where war and extreme violence are normalised, where genders and identities are policed, and where empathy and solidarity go to die. Nevertheless, and contrary to the populist idea of an impenetrable fortress wall, we understand the border as a site of exchange, complexity, negotiation, and discovery. 

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At the seemingly opposite pole, poetry has become ubiquitous in the art world as a signal of philosophy, a connection to the contemplative and metaphysical, and a response to the disdain for the promotional language that dominates the art world. We see the turn of contemporary art towards poetry as a response to the centrality of the affective and personal in contemporary theory and criticism, protests, and the digital sphere. Potentially, it also reflects a fundamental desire for political engagement that is today thwarted by the representative democratic system, online media and authoritarian financial interests. The question of the relationality between concrete borders and the abstract freedom of poetry is one we want to explore together, as antagonism, as counterbalance and as different aspects of the intimate treatment of bodies trying (and failing) to cross. 

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The program will be held both online and through two physical sessions: one visit to Zagreb, Croatia, and one visit to both Zagreb and Bihać, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The latter is realized in collaboration with Center for Contemporary Culture KRAK. Bihać has always been a border city, since Ottoman/Habsburg rivalries, with a heavy history both during the WWII and the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Located close to the Croatian border, today it is one of the key points in the attempts of migrants to enter the EU and the location of two EU-funded migrant camps. The program in both cities will include cultural workers, theorists, researchers, and activists working on borders and migration.

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Throughout the programme we will work with the Kontakt collection, which is our partner. The Kontakt Collection focuses on Central, Eastern and Southeastern European artistic activity and its relations to social and political developments since the late 1950s. By emphasising the power of artworks to process historical burdens and manipulations, the Kontakt collection amplifies how artists actively seek allyship and claim agency through self-organized infrastructures, which is crucial to analyse and rework in today’s conditions. Through a focus on artists and works from the Kontakt collection, participants will have intensive contact with past artistic endeavours which are not part of widely taught art history. Alongside access to this study collection, the programme will include visits to artists´ studios, galleries and museums, especially during the times in Zagreb, when participants will be encouraged to connect to a range of local cultural actors. 

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WHW Akademija offers localized knowledge of the region, its artists and (hi)stories, as well as its political urgencies. It aims to escape the regime of total visibility and competitiveness, by offering a framework for artistic work that is not about inclusion in the art system, but a critical and propositional challenge to the image/role of art and the system in which it operates. WHW Akademija takes its autonomy seriously and we believe it is a safe space for emerging artists and all other participants involved, while also encouraging risk-taking with its autonomous trajectories collectively shaped and defended.

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TIMELINE

The program starts in April 2026 and runs through October 2026, launching with online sessions in April, before convening a first in-person gathering in Zagreb in May. The program continues online until the end  of October 2026, when the participants will once more reconvene in Zagreb and visit Bihać.

Application deadline: 2.3.2026.

Interviews: March 2026

Final status notification: by the end of March 2026 

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First in person session in Zagreb: 20. – 30.5.2026.

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Second in person session in Zagreb and Bihać: 4. – 10.10.2026.

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Online participation schedule will be announced in April 2026 for chosen participants.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

WHW Akademija is open for international participants. It is open to individuals who are still in the formative stages of developing an independent artistic practice and are seeking to deepen their formal, theoretical, and critical skills. We encourage applications from those interested in the proposed topics. Applicants must commit to the full assigned schedule. 

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The working language of WHW Akademija is English.

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TUITION & COSTS

WHW Akademija is a tuition-free program. Program-related costs (including accommodation) in Zagreb and Bihać will be covered by WHW. Travel costs to and from Croatia will be reimbursed. 

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HOW TO APPLY

Please submit applications only through this application form. Applications must be received by March the 2nd, 2026 and include the following information:
• CV
• short biography (250 words max.)
• statement about your work (2 pages max.)

• one PDF portfolio (15 pages max.) containing work descriptions, images with captions, and links to media hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, and SoundCloud.

Please title all your files according to the following formulation: “Last name, first name[_CV / _biography /_statement / _portfolio].”

Candidates are selected based on merit as well as their application’s relevance to this year’s thematic framework. The program is open to applicants from all countries with priority to artists coming from Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe.

For additional questions, please contact: whw.prijave@gmail.com 
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PREVIOUS GUESTS

Between 2018 and 2025, WHW Akademija has hosted numerous international cultural workers: Marwa Arsanios, Zdenka Badovinac, Ivana Bago, Pierre Bal-Blanc, Zbyněk Baladrán, Andris Brikmanis, Emina Bužinkić, Ben Cain, Banu Cennetoğlu, DAAR – Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal, Yael Davids, Charles Esche, Denise Ferreira da Silva and Valentina Desideri, Branko Dimitrijević, iLiana Fokianaki,  Tina Gverović, Ayesha Hameed, Vlatka Horvat, Adelita Husni-Bey, Sanja Iveković, Ana Janevski, Rajkamal Kahlon, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Kem collective – Alex Baczyński-Jenkins and Kasia Wlaszczyk, Miguel A. López, David Maljković, Pablo Martínez, Aude Christel Mgba, Hana Miletić, Oscar Murillo, Marina Naprushkina, Daniela Ortiz, Manuel Pelmuş, Dan Perjovschi, Nataša Petrešin Bachelez‍ , farid rakun/Ruangrupa, Kathrin Rhomberg, Dubravka Sekulić, Elena Sorokina, Kate Sutton, Adam Szymczyk, Christine Tohmé, Miloš Trakilović, Françoise Vergès, Harsha Walia, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Jelena Vesić, Želimir Žilnik…

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FUNDERS
WHW Akademija is realised in partnership with Kontakt Art Collection and funded by ERSTE Foundation, Foundation for Arts Initiatives, Trust for Mutual Understanding, Ministry of Culture and Media of Republic of Croatia, City Office for Culture and Civil Society of the City of Zagreb and Kultura Nova Foundation.    

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