For seven years the Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts Łódź in Poland has organized the famous PATA International Summer Courses – Printmaking and Textile Art whose aims are to promote the artistic traditions of Łódź in the fields of graphic art and textile art. During its past editions, the event gained international prestige and became one of the main summer education centers in Europe where artists and students from all over the world come, including Albania, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, China, Denmark, Spain. , The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Iceland, India, Japan, Canada, Columbia, Cuba, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Portugal, the Republic of South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Italy. While these courses deepen knowledge and practice engraving techniques and textile art, participants gain international experience, expand their chain of contacts and have the opportunity to exhibit their work in an international context.

As part of an exchange agreement signed between the Fundación´ace and the Academy of Arts and Design of Lodz, in 2017 an open call was made for Argentine artists from which the artist Eugenia Foggel was selected. In 2018, reciprocally, we received the Polish artist Aleksandra Ilkiewicz, doctoral candidate of the Academy. In 2019 the exchange was made with teachers from the academy: Alicjia Habisiak Matzack and Tomas Matzack traveled to Buenos Aires as guest artists while the academy awarded two young members we selected from our team to their PATA courses: Cecilia Candiani, Assistant Executive and Sebastián Podbersich, who was a volunteer-in-residence in 2018. In this way Cecilia and Sebastián traveled to Lodz during the European summer participating as exchange scholars in the seminar of the Canadian artist Marilene Olivier: Graphics in the 3rd and 4th dimension.

PATA seminars are intended for students and graduates of Polish and foreign academies and for all artists who wish to learn or further develop their skills in the aforementioned fields. The objective of the course program is to awaken and cultivate by offering traditional forms of artistic expression as well as innovative technologies developed by leading artists. The fellows had access to the excellent study team from the Engraving Department, the Textile Art Department and the Textile Printing Department. The scope of the topics covered during the classes was adjusted to the individual needs of the individual participants and an exposition was made at the end of it.

Proyecto´ace has been invited as one of the participating centres for the international project EL PLIEGO / doble desdoblado, the 3rd Project of creation and international exchange between universities and educational centres in the graphic arts and international edition, organised by the Grupo dx5 of the Universidad de Vigo in Pontevedra, Spain in collaboration with the Department of Philosophy and the Arts, University of Quebec in Canada.

This project aims to continue the promotion of cultural movement across borders that printmaking allows (such as multiplication, versatility and transportability), revaluing the book format from its base module: the fold.

Artists, teachers and art students participate in a project that aims to reflect on the idea of the fold, taking the space of a sheet as the starting point and the encounter that these fold causes.

COLLABORATIVE WORK (by Adriana Moracci)

What is The Fold and how to approach and shape not only an image, but a concept that called Proyecto ´ace to be part of an International Project.

During intense days of work and reflection, 19 artists were selected to work collaboratively in the ´ace workshop, creating editions of the works that made up what was sent.

The themes that were developed from the simple and profound idea of ​​The Fold were enriched and shaped by the most varied visions in this regard. Thus, the specification referring to the body, the identity, the memory, the absence, the infinity, the prayer, the plots, the trace were all giving shape to the works produced. The meetings and video conferences prior to the edition days in the workshop were a stimulus and reason for reflection for the group of artists called.

The project opened the possibility of collaborative work not only between the participating artists in each venue, but also provided the opportunity to extend the communication networks between those who participated in it, showing once again that from the simplest ideas, multiple voices can emerge.