A conversation with Karolina Bieniek

A powerful conversation on what it means to build cultural partnerships rooted in listening, equality, and shared authorship. In this interview, Dr. Karolina Bieniek reflects on art as a force for connection, resilience, and transformation across Europe and Africa — and why true collaboration begins when distance becomes dialogue.

• You’ve spent many years building bridges between Europe, Africa, and beyond. What inspires you most about creating cultural partnerships that genuinely transform how communities understand one another? How do you envision collaboration that uplifts all sides equally?

What inspires me most is the moment when distance stops being abstract. When people who have never met, and who perhaps carry inherited assumptions about each other, begin to listen instead of explain. For me, cultural partnership is not about representation – it is about relationship.
In DECONFINING, I have experienced this on two levels. As the leader of Work Package no 4, working with festivals, I see how artistic collaboration creates very immediate spaces of encounter. Festivals are intense laboratories – temporary, but deeply transformative. And as a Core Group member, I am constantly aware that these encounters must be supported by governance structures that protect equality and shared authorship.
I believe collaboration uplifts all sides when it moves beyond the centre–periphery dynamic. I often describe our work as a “peripheries-to-peripheries” dialogue. This is how we place our Art Transparent in Deconfining and in Central Europe and East Africa meeting not through inherited colonial hierarchies, but through mutual negotiation. Equality does not mean sameness; it means co-responsibility. It means accepting that we are all transformed by the process.

• With your background in political science and international cultural policy, where do you see the greatest potential for cultural initiatives—like DECONFINING—to influence positive social transformation? What future do you hope these projects are paving?

My background in political science makes me very aware that cultural projects operate within broader geopolitical realities. We are living in a shifting international order, where new alliances and new narratives are emerging. In this context, culture is not decorative—it is foundational.
DECONFINING has the potential to influence social transformation precisely because it combines artistic practice with policy reflection. It does not only produce exhibitions or publications; it questions how institutions cooperate, how funding shapes mobility, how we understand authorship and responsibility.
I hope these projects are paving a future where European – African cooperation is not framed through development rhetoric or postcolonial guilt, but through shared creativity and structural dialogue and respect. A future where Central Europe is not merely adopting Western discourses but actively co-creating new frameworks of partnership.

• You’ve led and supported numerous major European initiatives. What, in your view, allows a cultural project to live on in communities long after the project ends? What does a truly sustainable legacy look like to you?

A project lives on when it leaves behind relationships, not just documentation.
In WP4, working with festivals, sustainability means that after the festival infrastructure is dismantled and the artworks travel home, something remains – new contacts, new ways of curating, new confidence in collaboration. In the Core Group, sustainability means institutional memory and policy shifts. It means that the experience changes how partners will design future projects.
For me, a sustainable legacy is not a building or even a publication. It is a network of people who trust each other enough to continue working together. It is a shared vocabulary that did not exist before. It is when mobility becomes a habit of cooperation rather than an exception.

• Your work often focuses on resilience and local community empowerment. How have you seen art help communities rediscover their strength or reshape their futures? What moments stand out as reminders of why this work matters?

Resilience is often misunderstood as endurance. For me, resilience is the ability to imagine alternatives.
I remember the opening of the DECONFINING exhibition in Dar es Salaam. Hundreds of people gathered. At some point, Singeli musicians featured in a video work began to perform live, spontaneously. The exhibition space transformed into a collective moment of energy and recognition. That was not just an event—it was a reminder that art can activate community memory and agency.
I have also seen this in our collaboration with Women’s History Museum Zambia. When local histories are acknowledged, translated, and connected to global conversations, communities regain a sense of authorship over their narratives.
These moments matter because they show that culture is not an imported product. It is a space where people see themselves differently—and therefore imagine their futures differently.

• Mobility is a core element of the DECONFINING project. When you think about artists and cultural practitioners traveling, learning, and creating together, what kinds of personal and collective transformations do you hope mobility will spark?

Mobility, in DECONFINING, is not tourism. It is a vulnerability.
When artists travel, they leave their familiar institutional environments. They are forced to listen more carefully. In WP4, I see mobility as a testing ground for humility – curators and artists must negotiate context, language, expectations. We expose ourselves to the unknown.
On a collective level, I hope mobility transforms how institutions think about partnership. That it replaces extractive models with reciprocal ones. That it encourages slower, more attentive forms of collaboration.
Mobility should not only change individuals—it should change structures.

• Through ART TRANSPARENT and other initiatives, you’ve worked closely with diverse communities. What approaches help ensure that cultural creation remains deeply rooted in listening, mutual respect, and shared ownership? What have communities taught you along the way?

Listening requires time – and trust.
At ART TRANSPARENT, whether in Wrocław or in East Africa, we try to build projects that begin with questions, not answers. In DECONFINING, this approach is visible in the multilingual publication “Narratives of Closeness and Distance.” The very act of translating and co-editing across continents is an exercise in shared ownership.
Communities have taught me patience. They have taught me that participation cannot be engineered – it must be invited. And they have taught me that authenticity is sensed immediately. If partnership is performative, it collapses. If it is honest, it grows.

• As a member of the core group of DECONFINING and a Delegate to the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum, you witness emerging cultural shifts firsthand. What gives you optimism about the future of European - African cultural cooperation? And what new narratives do you hope to see flourish in the coming years?

What gives me optimism is that younger cultural professionals no longer accept inherited hierarchies as natural. They are curious, critical, and eager to collaborate differently.
In the Core Group of DECONFINING, I see partners genuinely trying to rethink governance, authorship, and mobility. In the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum, I see how culture is increasingly recognised as part of foreign policy and societal resilience.
I hope to see narratives flourish that move beyond deficit thinking—beyond development frameworks or postcolonial binaries. I hope to see more “peripheries-to-peripheries” cooperation, where eg. Central Europe and Africa meet as co-authors of new cultural imaginaries.
Ultimately, I am optimistic because I have seen what happens when distance becomes dialogue. And once dialogue begins, it is very difficult to return to isolation.

About Karolina Bieniek

Dr. Karolina Bieniek, ART TRANSPARENT, has over 20 years of experience in the cultural and creative sector (CCSI). She is involved in the production of numerous cultural events of national and international importance and in the management of large European projects. She uses her experience in political science as an expert in international cultural policy. Regional specialization: CEE and ACP. Thematic specialization: EU/rope – Africa, sustainable development, local community development, resilience. Since 2024, she has been a Delegate to the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum for the 2024-2026 cycle. She coordinated the regional group of the Bosch Alumni Network and is also a member of the core group of the project ‘Deconfining – Politics, Art and Culture in Africa and Europe’.