Julia Mensch is Argentinean visual artist. She graduated from IUNA in Buenos Air and at the moment studies at the UdK Berlin, laureate of international prizes, and have already realized many projects in residence. In her works, she useddifferent tools to collect stories and impressions, reuse in installation, including videos, photos, texts and objects.  She reflects on the collective and mythological history and present of each of us, questioning the possibility of changes and new spaces to share
experiences.
Her residence in Kosice last from august to November 2012, and entered the frame of a long term project started in Leipzig in 2008, called The Life in Red, an artistic investigation into the history of Communism on the one hand, and on the other of the use of personal document to reflect on history and the change of representation of images in different times and
contexts.
For this research, she is following the step of her grandfather, Rafael Mensch, who was born in the Ukraine from where he emigrated to Argentina in the year 1933, and returned to visit Europe in the 1970s. As a convinced communist he wanted to get to know “Socialism in practice” in the former GDR and the Soviet Union. During the 3 month residency, Julia Mensch found his native village, Salashi, in western part of Ukraine, next to the Schengen border with Poland. She realized there a serial of photographs and interviews, investigating the archives of the region, in order to realized a book and an art piece. Which have as starting point her family story, but will also include the history and present of Salashi and its inhabitants.

You can watch a short video about Julia’s residency here/Krátke video o Juliinej rezidencii si môžete pozrieť tu:

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