ADKDW RESIDENCY
with MRIGANKA MADHUKAILLYA, RYM JALIL, KEKAHI WAHI, DARDAN ZHEGROVA
The ADKDW Residency brought international artists and cultural workers to Cologne in 2024 in order to connect them with the local art and creative scene and give them the opportunity to conduct research and find new impulses for their own work.
The Indian artist and filmmaker MRIGANKA MADHUKAILLYA was a guest in the first half of the year. His film Swamp things is an attempt to make the city's organic and inorganic voices - from minerals to ecosystems to microorganisms - audible. From April to June 2024, Mriganka Madhukaillya continued his research for the Swamp things project in Cologne, which is being carried out in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Maan Barua (University of Cambridge) and the Berlin sound artist Ralf Wendt. As part of a lecture performance, the three presented Swamp things to the Cologne audience and talked about how theory and visual thinking illuminate each other in the filmmaking process.
In May and June 2024 we welcomed the artist DARDAN ZHEGROVA, whose work was shown in 2023 as part of Manifesta 14 in Prishtina, as Artist-in-Residence in Cologne. Dardan Zhegrova's works are oriented towards objects and performance. The breaking down of various boundaries in Zhegrova's work also reflects his queer identity, which oscillates between feminine and masculine attributes and consciously rejects and transcends a normative understanding of gender.
From July to November 2024 the Participatory Residency Program was shaped by RYM JALIL (they/them) - poet, visual anthropologist and food artist. Jalil's work orbits around relationships between memory, social space and cultural significations of food and coffee. Jalil's long-term project "Jebena Talks; Conversations and Ceremony Around Memory and Food" is a space for intimate gathering and exploration of ritual with a focus on themes of access and exclusion.
From October to December 2024, the film initiative KEKAHI WAHI, led by filmmaker SANCIA MIALA SHIBA NASH and artist DREW K. BRODERICK, offered a series of events including a meet-and-greet, a weaving and reading workshop, and a film screening that created space for discussion. The kekahi wahi residency was made possible with the kind support of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and took place in cooperation with the Hawai'i Triennale 2025 'ALOHA NŌ'.
The new international artist funding project Mutual Empathies with Saroot Supasuthivech and Vanja Smiljanić started in November 2024. The collaborative programme of the Academy of the Arts of the World, the Goethe-Institut Vilnius and the Rupert Centre for Art, Residencies and Education aimed to promote artistic positions that dealt with the complex eco-political issues of our global society in a meaningful and playful way. The first edition included residencies, productions and public events in Vilnius, Cologne and online between November 2024 and February 2025.
