mutual benefits: artist in residence

We are announcing an open call for residency projects within the international residency program of Pragovka Gallery 2026.

The theme Mutual Benefits for Pragovka Gallery’s international residency program in 2026 is understood as an opportunity to reflect on the various forms that cooperation, sharing, and reciprocity can take in today’s world—in art, society, nature, and technology.

We are interested in projects that explore reciprocity within natural systems, such as symbiosis, mutualism, or other models of coexistence and cooperation in ecosystems, and seek ways to reflect on these principles in times of climate crisis and ecological exhaustion. We welcome projects that address human relationships, collective processes, shared authorship, responsibility, care, and solidarity, as well as questions of participation and collaborative creation. We are also open to projects that focus on alternative economies—barter, gift, community, and circular models of sharing values and resources.

The theme Mutual Benefits is also understood in a broader ecosystem of collaboration between species and technologies, including questions of ethics, agency, and relationships with more-than-human actors. We are equally interested in models of cooperation between artists, curators, institutions, and audiences, and in approaches that reconsider cultural infrastructures as networks of mutual support. We ask critically: what are the risks and limits of reciprocity, where does collaboration end and exploitation begin, what do compromises mean, and how can different interests be balanced within collective projects?

Mutual Benefits investigates interconnection and cooperation across human and more-than-human systems. It focuses on processes of care, shared responsibility, and sustainability that shape the dynamics of ecological, social, and political communities. By analyzing internal structures and invisible processes, it emphasizes how reciprocal relations can bring benefits to all involved parties—from human actors to natural ecosystems.

Projects may address not only external forms of collaboration but also internal processes of care, regeneration, and transformation that are key to long-term sustainability. This perspective highlights the necessity of moving beyond hierarchical relations toward models of mutual support and reciprocity, where the well-being of the individual and the collective are interlinked. It examines how shared forms of care and ecology can serve as tools for strengthening communities while protecting the fragile ecosystems we inhabit.