My name is Katarína Gališinová, I originally come from Slovakia, and coming July I will be graduating from the department of Photography at The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. During my studies I became involved with social movements of refugees whose asylum requests have been denied and who therefore became ‘illegal immigrants’ in the eyes of the authorities, namely ‘Right to Exist’ in The Hague, ‘We Are Here’ in Amsterdam and ‘Sans Papiers’ in Brussels. I have dedicated five years to research and understand the complex situation - the state of limbo where these people find themselves trapped in. And I began to question my role and my responsibility as a human being and as an artist and how I as an artist could possibly contribute to a larger social change.

Although I have studied and developed myself as a photographer I do not bind myself to one medium only. I have completed one exchange semester at Luca School of Arts in Brussels at the faculty of film making, where I developed my skills in producing, organizing and directing. I would describe myself as a committed, emphatic, helpful, thoughtful and hopeful mediator. Essentially, my artistic practice is a social act. Dialogue and collaboration are the tools with which I interact. I search for ways how to engage and help the politically sensible gain not only visibility but also recognition. (Especially in my last collaborative project with a refugee football club We Are Here FC.) For I believe that the role of artistic practices is not only to confront the audience with the utmost painful truths, but also to mobilise through the universal power of imagination to shape and to establish society based on equal human rights, freedom and social justice.