Viktor Witkowski Attends Artist Residency at the Spinnerei

Viktor Witkowski is a current resident artist at the non-profit LIA Leipzig International Art Programme. The program is housed in the Spinnerei, a former factory complex turned artist center on the western outskirts of Leipzig, Germany. 

The Spinnerei is an expansive industrial site that previously housed the largest cotton mill in continental Europe, until production was closed in 1993 after the reunification of Germany. The nearly 25 acre, 20 building space officially stopped production in 2000 and has since been converted for various purposes including housing, restaurants and shops. Today, the space is predominantly the home of 10 artist galleries, an arts center and over 100 resident artists, including residents of the Leipzig International Art Programme. 

Witkowski, a lecturer in the Department of Studio Art at Dartmouth, is the recipient of a faculty fellowship from the Leslie Center for the Humanities. The fellowship has allowed him the funding to live and work at the LIA artist residency at the Spinnerei where he is currently working on two projects: a film, depicting three generations of his Polish family, and a new body of paintings. Witkowski's work has previously been featured by the Leslie Center for the Humanities in the Russo Gallery alongside New Hampshire photographer Becky Field, in the exhibition Faces of Immigration: Here and Abroad. He is also known for his recent film Rutland, originally intended to document the planned resettlement of 100 Syrian and Iraqi refuges in Rutland, Vermont, the film instead depicts the town's dismay when only 14 of those refuges arrive, the rest of the families having been inhibited by a newly-implemented travel ban.

Viktor Witkowski's most recent work in both film and painting can be viewed on his website.