Quart, Issue 81: Female artists in Silesia and from Silesia: presence, invisibility, relocations and returns.

Submission deadline: April 30, 2026
Publishing date: September/October 2026
Thematic editors: Małgorzata Micuła PhD (National Museum Wrocław), Zofia Reznik PhD (The Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław)

We invite you to submit articles for the issue of Quart dedicated to the work of female artists connected – both historically and contemporarily – to Wrocław and to Silesia. We are interested in analyses, case studies, and theoretical approaches that allow for capturing the complexity and diversity of artistic practices of women functioning in local, regional, and transregional contexts.

While a reinterpretation and notable increase in appreciation of women’s work have taken place within the sphere of Polish art in recent years, Wrocław and, more broadly, Silesian artists remain underrepresented, with their works not receiving full recognition. Problematic gaps in historical and artistic research, together with the undisturbed division between the centre and the peripheries, translate to a vague, incomplete image of the local women-built creative scene.

Low visibility of activities of Wrocław and region-linked women may seem even more acute considering the impact of Maria Dawska, a local artist, on whose initiative some of the first post-World War II exhibitions of “women’s art” took place in 1952-1953, and the first Polish feminist art exhibition organised by Natalia LL in 1978.

Existing, on a national scale, disproportions in visibility of Wrocław female artists are without a doubt a result of peripheralization mechanisms, as well as the specificity of the local artistic scene – shaped on one side by progressive activities of the new avant-garde, flourishing in parallel to other cultural centres, and on the other by strong artisanal traditions maintaining influence on the distinctiveness of Wrocław and the region.

We welcome interdisciplinary, feminist, intersectional, transnational, and post-migratory approaches, as well as those rooted in research on institutions, archives, and social practices, in the following thematic fields:
- forgotten or underappreciated female artists linked to Breslau, Wrocław, or Silesia across the ages, and their returns,
- local and regional genealogies of women’s art in the context of the political and social history of the region,
- female artists in the context of the multicultural nature of Silesia, as well as migrations, resettlements, and complex identities (Polish, German, Czech, Jewish, Silesian) in the region,
- translocal flow and translocal contacts: Polish-German, Polish-Czech, and other artistic relations,
- modern female artists and their work in the fields of visual arts, performance arts, new media, conceptual arts, and digital arts, all in the context of the media traditionally associated with women,
- activities of female ceramic and glass artists and designers in the context of the central axes of artistic discourse,
- artistic sisterhood and creative cooperation of women,
- feminist and queer creative strategies of regional female artists.
Relocations, disappearances, resignations, and unrealised artistic careers of women in Silesia and from Silesia,
- memory, oblivion, and blank spots: archives, collections, and documentation of Wroclaw and Silesian female artists’ works,
- research and scientific projects, curatorial practices, and the role of institutions in shaping the narrative on local art created by women.

We also invite you to submit texts dedicated to other subjects, not listed above, but still relevant to the main theme of the issue.

The article (between 20,000 and 40,000 characters, in Polish or English, with the possibility to include up to 10 images) needs to be formatted in accordance with the guidelines (available online at: https://czasopisma.uwr.edu.pl/quart/libraryFiles/downloadPublic/97) and sent to: quartuwr.edu.pl by April 30, 2026. The editors reserve the right to select the texts for publishing. Each article undergoes a double-blind peer review process.