Another resident in Paris is Karina Golisová.
From early April to the end of June, Karina Golisová—a photographer and PhD candidate at AFAD—will undertake a residency at the Cité internationale des arts, supported by AFAD and the Slovak Institute in Paris.
Karina Golisová is currently a full-time PhD candidate at the Department of Photography and New Media (supervisor: Olja Triaška Stefanović), where her research focuses on resilience and resilient society as a response to contemporary crises. She received her bachelor’s degree from the same department at AFAD, and her master’s degree from the Department of Photography at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.
Her work focuses on documentary photography, the creation of photographic zines, and working with archives. She is interested in resilience, relationships, and community, and therefore turns to people with whom she shares a close bond. Through intimate relationships, she observes broader political and cultural contexts: the housing crisis, late capitalism, the slow rise of fascism, as well as strategies of resilience and solidarity. “My methodology naturally fits within the ‘practice as research’ approach — I explore resilience not only as a concept, but also as a lived experience. Photography is a tool for observing my own life and returning to certain moments, not in order to relive them, but to examine them consciously. I detach myself from the original emotions and intentions and move, on the one hand, between intuition and careful observation of everyday life, and on the other, between rational, conceptual framing.”
During her stay in Paris, she plans to deepen her doctoral research and work with archives:
“I am increasingly drawn to the performative dimension of photography. In my upcoming project on resilience, I do not present the archive as a finished collection, but rather bring it into the present through encounters with friends, who become performers. I am interested in the moment when they see their own past for the first time in a form I have created for them — when the image transforms into a gesture or a body. I examine such situations as moments in which photography becomes an act of being together, and where the very process of making it visible can become an experience of resilience.”
You can find Karina Golisová’s work on Instagram (@karinagolisova) or on the Behance platform.
Eleven people who had graduated from AFAD, taught there, or were studying at the doctoral level applied to the sixth open dual call. Their focus covered a wide range, from painting, intermedia, and performance to photography, digital art, and art theory. In the second round, the commission at AFAD (composed of Barbora Komarová, Miroslava Urbanová, Beata Jablonská, Ján Kralovič) selected six candidates. In the second round, the committee at Cité (Vincent Gonzalvez – Director of the Residency Department, Souraya Kessaria – Residencies and Partnerships Program) chose Maja Štefančíková for the first residency in 2026 and Karina Golisová for the second residency, running from April to June.
The Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava has established a long-term collaboration with the Cité internationale des arts in Paris, within which it sends authors from Slovakia twice a year from the fields of visual arts, design, architecture, restoration, and art theory. The residency is open to people who have graduated from AFAD or are currently enrolled in doctoral studies — regardless of discipline, field of research, or age.
Partners:
- Slovak Institute in Paris
- Cité internationale des arts Paris
- Tatra banka Foundation