Art Scenes face-to-face: Zagreb/Maastricht

How can artists living in Croatia/ The Netherlands build a sustainable career?

90% of art graduates abandon the possibility of becoming a professional artist within the first 5 years after completing their studies, and this happens everywhere. Why is this?

Croatia and The Netherlands have different policies and education systems. Nevertheless, artists still face major challenges when starting to build a career in both places. Is the situation really comparable in the two countries? What are the differences/ similarities, and what can we learn from each-other?

How is the art scene in the two regions? What are the issues that artists face in Zagreb/ Maastricht and what opportunities do these cities offer graduated artists and local talents?

Starting from the educational gaps, we will look at what is needed to build a career as an artist and dive into the support systems, services, or opportunities that artists can access and benefit from in Croatia and in The Netherlands. This dialogue will allow us to compare, finding similarities and differences.

For this panel discussion, moderated by BIZkoshnica and The Artist and the Others, we invited 4 experts from Zagreb and Maastricht to share their personal and professional experiences. The panelists joining us to look at the two art scenes are: Jelena Bračun and Maja Rozman from Zagreb, and Charlotte Lagro and Roy Voragen from Maastricht. This will give us the opportunity to look at the current situation and issues affecting emerging artists in the two regions, and discuss how working conditions can be improved and what we can learn from each-other. An open Q&A will follow the discussion.

Join our panel discussion ‘Art Scenes face-to-face: Zagreb/Maastricht’, on the 3rd of March 2023 from 12-13 p.m., to hear what the experts, artists, project managers and curators have to say!

Register your interest to participate, you will receive a Zoom link prior to the event. Participation is free and open to all.

Meet the panelists:

Jelena Bračun

Jelena Bračun graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and she hold a Master’s degree from the Academy in Ljubljana. She worked in publishing for 10 years, and then worked for different associations within creative and cultural industries as a Project Manager for 5 years. During this period she has developed her artistic career as well. She has been working with animated and experimental film, and, for the last few years, with photography and photo collage. Two years ago she decided to open her own company, where she combines her skills and her love: organisation and artistic creation. She has managed 7 EU projects, is the winner of the European award for innovative teaching, and is also the creator of the luxury planner brand, ART+ journal.

Maja Rozman

Maja Rozman graduated in Printmaking from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 2006. During her studies she won both a CEEPUS and a Kulturkontakt grant, and attended Academies of Fine Art in Poland, Austria and Hungary. Maja has received many awards and acknowledgements for her extraordinary work: the Rector’s Award, the Essl Award CEE, the CAA Award at the 6th Croatian Prints Triennial, a MTG Honorary mention at the International Print Triennial Krakow in Poland, etc. She participated in workshops and seminars both in Croatia and abroad, and was an artist-in-residence in Germany, France, Italy, Austria and The Netherlands (Kunstenaars Logies, Amersfoort).

Charlotte Lagro

Charlotte Lagro graduated form the Maastricht Institute of Arts and was a participant at the Jan Van Eyck Academie. Her often participatory works have a strong performative character and are driven by her own intimate considerations and observations as well as those of the people around her. Through dance, drawings but also mundane acts such as participating in traffic or through conversation, Charlotte creates set-ups to raise questions about our use of public and communal spaces, the role of art in our daily lives and the emotive and aesthetic quality of industrially manufactured objects. Charlotte has also had solo presentations at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht, Biennale de l’Image Possible (BIP) in Liège (BE), LOOP Barcelona (ES), Galerie Nafja Vilenne (BE), as well as group exhibitions at OCAT Institute Beijing (CH), Bible NYC (US), FIAC/Officielle Art Fair Paris (FR), among others. Her work has been featured in Artforum Critic’s Pick, WETFilm, AVRO Kunstuur among others. She was a participant in various residencies such as the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and NARS Foundation NYC. She currently teaches at the Maastricht Institute of Arts and in a member of the artistic team of De Fabriek Eindhoven. In 2015, she won the Hermine van Bers Fine Art Award.

Roy Voragen

Roy Voragen studied Philosophy and Political Theory at the University of Amsterdam. He is a curator at Greylight Projects and Drawing Centre Diepenheim, an assessor at the Willem de Kooning Academy, and a freelance art writer. He lived and worked in Southeast Asia from 2003 to 2019. He taught Philosophy at universities in Indonesia, where he lived between 2003 and 2017, and he curated exhibitions and projects in Bandung, Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Manila, Singapore, Hong Kong, Yokohama and Kuala Lumpur. Between 2017 and 2019 he was artistic director of 1335MABINI in Manila.