17 February 2025
Mariia Kardash: “My internship gave me the experience of belonging not only to the Office team but also to the Ukrainian art community of Graz”
Mariia Kardash, Professional Integration HUB 2.0 Program Participant (Office Ukraine Graz)
Intro
- Age: 33 years old
- City in Ukraine where you lived before the full-scale invasion (forced relocation): Izmail (although I lived 10 years in Kyiv)
- Specialization: Performing Arts & Cultural Anthropology
PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND
My professional background is quite unusual – I am a dance anthropologist and performer. I research dance as a cultural phenomenon: why people dance, why exactly this type of dance, what a particular dance tells about its performers, and so on. As an artist, I dance and have some experience with theatre too, although lately I have been more focused on research and don’t perform very often. The Dance Anthropology field is pretty new to Ukraine: I left before 2022, so my career took its current shape already abroad (although I used to give dance classes and organize events when living in Kyiv).
FORCED EMIGRATION
The full-scale war found me in Katowice, Poland, on a work project. I stayed there first until the end of my project and then by inertia, thinking “Okay, a couple of months here and I will figure out what to do next”. A couple of months turned into a couple of years until I was invited to the 2-month research residence at the Institute of Social Sciences in Vienna (IWM) at the beginning of 2024. Knowing that such a long absence would lead to the loss of my legal status in Poland I found quite a radical solution to this problem: moving to Austria. This decision was driven by many factors: productive time and stimulating intellectual environment at the IWM; Vienna’s rich cultural life and opportunities for professional development that it brings, especially in such a rare field as mine; and of course, ambition. At that point, my life in Poland became relatively comfortable but did not bring me the desired professional realization. I was yearning for a change and even a challenge, as I knew I could do much more if I found an environment that matched my skills.
LIFE IN AUSTRIA
It was not the first time I had to change my country of residence: in 2018-2020 I got the Erasmus Mundus scholarship for studying in four countries (Norway, France, the UK, and Hungary). Apart from the international diploma, this experience granted me a nomad lifestyle: since graduation, I have constantly moved from one short-term project to another in different countries. Each country where I lived had its pluses and minuses, including Austria. I still can’t get used to shops closing so early – my normal time for getting groceries used to be 9 pm. I’m still adjusting to the German language and always need a moment to collect my thoughts and consult with Google Translate, even though I took German classes in high school. On the other hand, once again taking the risk of moving to a new country was really rewarding: after my residence at IWM, I got a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture (BMKOES) to continue my research and then eventually got into the Professional Hub program. So far navigating the cultural field in Austria has been quite favourable for me (and for many other Ukrainian artists that I am in touch with), and I keep working hard hoping that luck will stay by my side.
Professional Integration HUB
I think I discovered the Professional Integration Hub through Office Ukraine’s repost about the Hub’s open call – at least, I knew from the beginning that Office Ukraine, with its focus on the cultural sphere and close connection to my home country, would be my first choice for the internship. However, it was a challenge to decide to which Office exactly I wanted to apply, Graz or Vienna: at that moment I was based in Vienna but my profile fit better to Graz’s job description. I trusted the organizers with this decision and they recommended my candidature to Office Ukraine Graz. So I moved to Graz for the internship (as you might have noticed, I like radical solutions 🙂
Last two years I mostly worked independently either in a short-term format of the individual residence or in the home office, so at some point I started missing working in a team and having daily interactions with the colleagues in the office. My internship gave me the experience of belonging not only to the Office team but also to the Ukrainian art community of Graz, thanks to the multiple events and gatherings that I participated in or organized.
Funny enough, in the most intense weeks when the Office tasks overlapped with the internship study visits for which I had to travel to Vienna, or with some personal deadlines, I missed being a freelancer who works in her own rhythm. But I guess this is it, the grass is always greener on the other side.
I was impressed that Office Ukraine Graz, besides all the ongoing projects and day-to-day processes, remains pretty much community-oriented and reachable for the Ukrainian artists with any questions they might have. At some point, I also had to mobilize my mentoring skills to support artists in difficult personal or professional situations. Another remarkable detail for me was a loooong list of cultural professionals from Graz who supported and kept supporting Ukraine and whom we invited for the recent Office Ukraine Book Presentation in Graz. This and many other personal interactions painted the Graz art community for me as genuine and passionate about the social causes it chooses to support and defend.
PLANS AFTER PARTICIPATING IN THE PROGRAM
In my work, I’ve been constantly balancing between artistic and academic projects, and now after the internship, I have enough competencies to enter one more area – cultural management. Still, my main focus for the next few months will be searching for open calls and drafting research proposals: I plan to enroll in a PhD program related either to artistic research or cultural anthropology, so I’m happy that this internship brought me so many connections in the cultural sphere in Austria. Being within the art community of Graz also motivated me to come back to my artistic practice. Observing from the insider position how different artists engage in their work definitely influenced my own approach to art production – I can’t wait to dive into creative search again.
Photos: Valerie Loudon