About Housing Poverty at the East Slovak Gallery

The long-term project House of Mine, held at the East Slovak Gallery in Košice, ran from 2022 to 2024 and concluded this April. Its central theme was housing—specifically, the housing crisis and housing poverty that are increasingly visible in contemporary society. Funded by the Norwegian Fund, the project encompassed a wide range of events, including international exhibitions, lectures and discussions, targeted events for children and the elderly, as well as artist residencies.

Kontur Magazine produced a video report about one of the closing events of the two-year series: the exhibition by Dutch-Irish urbanist and landscape architect Fiona de Heer, who participated in the House of Mine residency. De Heer collaborated with the Košice-based Spolka Association to explore the accessibility of homeownership for different groups within the city’s population. The exhibition, titled Housing Stories, does not follow the usual aesthetic conventions of exhibition displays but is primarily focused on presenting the findings of their research.

Over the past decade, Fiona de Heer has researched the forms of social inequalities as they manifest in housing disparities in countries such as Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Japan, China, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

Fiona de Heer: Housing Stories, East Slovak Gallery, Košice, 05. 09. 2023 – 01. 10. 2023