The UMPRUM Visiting Artist for the 2025/2026 SPRING semester is Harun Morrison
THE PROGRAM OF THE UMPRUM VISITING ARTIST STUDIO IN THE 2025/2026 SPRING SEMESTER
Studies
today
Program Title and Syllabus:
Symbiotic Inhabitation, Embedding and Grafting
The symbiotic in biological terms is a close connection between different types of organisms in which they live together and benefit from each other. Heinrich Anton de Bary, defines symbiosis as ‘the living together of unlike organisms’. Although in some definitions of symbiotic, it's a parent category of behaviour that might include parasitic alongside two other typical categories: (1) mutualistic and (2) commensalist. The former being mutually beneficial, whereas in commensalist (2) one species benefits and the other is unaffected.)
Embedding, which we can loosely define as one structure implanted in another, can be a video within a video as practiced in reaction videos and by streamers or a physical object. Grafting is a term used in horticultural practice to enable two different plants, even two different species to fuse together. Taking this age long practice as a starting point, alongside embedding and symbiotic inhabitation, how and to what end can these processes be models of collaborative working, intentionally bridging between works and practices?
This series invites participants to consider their practice in relation to symbiotic relationships with each other's work and the potential of conceptual and material grafting and embedding of one work to within another. This will necessarily involve working in duos and triads.
We will also do group readings and listening sessions together and practice simple horticultural techniques.
Artist's Bio:
Harun Morrison is an artist and writer based in London and a former associate artist with Greenpeace UK on the project Bad Taste. Harun is currently showing work in the Brent Biennial 2025: Bones, stones and calling the four elements. He recently presented work in the group show, SOIL: The World at Our Feet. In 2024, he was in the two person show, DONO, at Somerset House Studios project space G31 alongside Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom and the solo show Conjunction at VOLT, Devonshire Collective in Eastbourne . His forthcoming novel, The Escape Artist will be published by Book Works. Recent group exhibitions include Sonic Acts 2024: The Spell of The Sensuous, Amsterdam, Chronic Hunger / Chronic Desire in Timișoara, Romania, BALATORIUM Disturbed Waters, in Veszprém, Hungary as part of the European Capital of Culture 2023 programme and Bamako Biennial, 2020 in Mali. Harun is a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths University, London and part of the Art and Ecology Research Centre. He is also part of the faculties of the Dutch Art Institute, MA Art Praxis, Ruskin School of Fine Art, Oxford, Open School East and Conditions in Croydon, London.
www.harunmorrison.net / @harunishere
Photo: The Anchor, The Drum, The Ship (2022 - ), Gladstone Park. Harun Morrison. Photo by James Allan.
The structure of the program:
The visiting artist will give a theoretical and practical course.
The program is structured in several intense in-person sessions with the visiting artist and several online meetings with her and her guests. Regular meetings of the group will be held in person weekly throughout the term.
Applications:
The program is part of the Fine Arts Department of UMPRUM and is primarily reserved to its students but offers limited numbers of places to the students of other departments of UMPRUM. Students of the bachelor, master and PhD programs can apply.
All students apart from the students of the first year of Bachelor Program and the students currently graduating from Bachelor and Master Program are encouraged to enroll. The Visiting Artist Program is open to students of Fine Arts Department and all other UMPRUM departments in limited numbers.
To apply, students must have completed their previous semester and enrolled in the next semester. For applications please contact the UMPRUM Study department.
For more information please contact the program’s Czech pedagogue Sláva Sobotovičová, ssobot@umprum.cz, 737 620 381
Deadline for applications: Jan 31st, 2026
In the past UMPRUM has hosted courses of the following visiting artists:
fall 2025/26 Dani d'Emilia: Artistic Practices for Times of Transition. Radical Tenderness, Metabolic Intimacy, conceptual “sheddings”.
spring 2024/25 Basim Magdy: Playing Musical Chairs in a Locked Room. A multi-disciplinary approach to creating art
fall 2024/25 Anna Witt: The Survival of The Softest. Dynamics of non-competitiveness.
spring 2023/24 Setareh Shahbazi: Eyes, Come Back! Solidarity in Art.
fall 2023/2024 Jana Ndiaye Berankova and guests: East-South. Transnational Exchanges Between Eastern Europe and Global South.
spring 2022/2023 Özlem Altin: Draw a map to get lost. Listening in.
fall 2022/2023 Marwa Arsanios: Building a structure. Strategies of self-organizing.
spring 2021/2022 Viktor Timofeev: Process Soup. Artist’s Derailing and Return Points.
fall 2021/2022 Matt Mullican: Details from an Imaginary Universe
spring 2020/2021 Maja Smrekar: Dialogues with Different Kinds of Interlocutors
fall 2020/2021 Sam Lewitt: Scales
spring 2019/2020 Tyler Coburn: Counterfactuals
fall 2019/2020 Justin Fitzpatrick: Critical Aspects of Painting
spring 2018/2019 Nina Beier: Cultural Meanings of Material and Objects
fall 2018/2019 David Maljković: Crossovers of Installation
spring 2017/2018 Marie de Brugerolle: The Legacy of Performance
