Three installations turn towards monuments that are momentarily on a break. Each approaches memory
through processes of accumulation and reduction: as something that gleans, sheds, and reconfigures itself over time. Yarn explores how collective memory circulates and adapts in built environments.
Galeria Arsenał in Białystok
The exhibition title, Art for the End of the World, situates this body of work in relation to crises that are increasingly entering public consciousness. Art created here and now, though motivated by many different impulses, can be read as a story about the end of the world understood as the breakdown of the existing order. It speaks of unpredictable consequences, mechanisms that have slipped out of control, and a pervasive sense of anxiety and disillusionment. Pandemic, war, and the migration and ecological crises form the everyday reality in which contemporary artistic practice is embedded. This collection allows for many possible readings, one of which unfolds in the context of Andrzej Marzec’s Antopocień and Timothy Morton’s Dark Ecology.
In the introduction to the Polish edition of Morton’s Dark Ecology, Andrzej Marzec notes that the book leads us into three different kinds of darkness, each corresponding to a successive stage of ecological awareness. The first is associated with melancholy, gloom, and depression brought about by the destructive force of the climate crisis. The second kind of darkness emerges from the uncanniness of the beings inhabiting the Anthropocene, entities that are ambiguous, mysterious, and resistant to established categories. The third darkness takes the form of anarchic play, in which we relinquish the need to control others and abandon the search for obvious solutions.[1]
In the face of an uncertain future, art becomes both a form of testimony and a place of refuge. The exhibition Art for the End of the World presents a selection of works from the GaMA collection that grapple with crises of reality, relationships, and identity. The works on view reveal a wide range of strategies of resistance, from irony and defiance, through melancholy, to attempts to heal the relationship between humans and nature, as well as with themselves. From this perspective, the end of the world does not appear as a final catastrophe, but rather as a moment of transition, a turning point at which a new sensibility may emerge. The exhibition takes the form of a visual essay on the contemporary condition, suspended between disintegration and hope. Paintings, sculptures, and films assembled within the exhibition space examine the human condition in an era of excess, violence, and climate change. The oldest work included in the exhibition is Jarosław Kozłowski’s 1970 assemblage Absent. It can be read as an act of protest, a gesture of withdrawal from the art world, but also as a declaration of refusal to participate in a society whose thoughtless actions are leading toward catastrophe. A similar resonance can be found in Leszek Knaflewski’s video You Stand in My Place, in which the artist switches off a light bulb using a golf club. This gesture functions as a symbolic farewell, including a farewell to his own works, whose titles appear between shots. It is as if Knaflewski anticipated his premature departure and was saying: “the last one turns off the light; what remains after me will be an empty, dark space.” Monika Sosnowska’s Concrete sculptures depict spiders frozen in motion, remnants of our civilisation of steel and concrete. They are twisted and deformed, recalling fragments of modernist structures that have lost their original logic and functionality. In this way, the artist comments on the fragility of modernist utopias and on the belief that pure form and rational structure could produce a lasting, orderly world. The human figure Colosus, created by Przemysław Branas, is hollow inside and composed entirely of cardboard boxes from luxury fashion brands. It is precisely this industry that has become one of the main driving forces behind the ecological apocalypse. A commentary on this cardboard monument can be found in Radek Szlaga’s painting depicting a pig’s head, tellingly titled Kill Your Idol. In her ironic film Public Displays of Affection, which shows police officers conducting exercises in a small private apartment, Liliana Zeic draws attention to the consequences of fear and perceived threat produced by the institutions of the police state that we allow into our homes. The unsettling, neurotic paintings of Karolina Jabłońska, Martyna Czech, and Marta Bystroń present visions of an untamed, dangerous, and mysterious world, in which it becomes difficult to distinguish dreams from reality. Their works pulse with emotion, exposing inner tensions, anxieties, and uncertainty. By contrast, Tomasz Mróz’s sculpture, created during the COVID-19 pandemic, offers a caricatural image of human helplessness, with a head symbolically yet grotesquely weighed down by various burdens. Mróz’s work can also be read as a parody of contemplation in nature, where the pursuit of spiritual fulfilment gives way to a depressive vision of numbness and oppression.[2]
In his works, including Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World and Being Ecological, Timothy Morton develops the concept of hyperobjects: phenomena such as global warming, plastic pollution in the oceans, or radioactivity that are “distributed across time and space,” invisible or only partially accessible to human perception, yet exerting immense influence. Morton proposes an ontological model that challenges the classical distinction between subject (the human) and object (the world). All entities, human and non-human alike, are understood as equally valid objects capable of affecting one another. This perspective necessitates a fundamental rethinking of ethics, perception, and artistic practice. For Morton, art enables us to sense or visualise these vast systems and non-human agents that operate beyond our habitual modes of perception – hyperobjects. From this perspective, the exhibition suggests that the “end of the world” should not be understood solely as catastrophe, but rather as the gradual erosion of a reality long regarded as stable and secure. This reading aligns with Morton’s diagnosis that we already live in a post-anthropocentric world. The works presented in the exhibition reveal objects, relationships, and processes that exceed anthropocentric frameworks. In this sense, art becomes an “ecological” gesture in Morton’s understanding, not as a representation of nature, but as a mode of being in relation with the non-human. This approach is evident in the artistic practices of Piotr C. Kowalski’s Nienawiszcz series, in which the artist relinquishes control over image-making to natural forces, and in Diana Lelonek’s Zoe-therapy, where portraits of philosophers symbolising patriarchal wisdom are consumed by colonies of bacteria. Jarosław Kozakiewicz’s Horizontal Disturbance stages a confrontation between enlarged organic structures and the urban order of Poznań’s Old Town. Kozakiewicz constructs a dynamic superorganism governed by its own internal logic, one that overtakes and disrupts the city’s geometric grid. The object by the duo Inside Job (Ula Lucińska and Michał Knychaus) draws on post-apocalyptic aesthetics, treating them as a space for reflection on contemporary social and existential tensions. Its title, Get Down, Get Down Little Henry Lee and Stay All Night with Me, is taken from the refrain of a traditional English folk song. The ballad tells the story of a man who rejects a former lover, who, driven by jealousy, murders him and conceals his body. The most widely known contemporary version of this dark narrative is Nick Cave and P. J. Harvey’s Henry Lee from the album Murder Ballads (1996). Dominika Olszowy’s A Keepsake for Ossowiecki draws on the aesthetic of television fortune-tellers who skilfully extract money from naïve viewers by offering alluring visions of the future. This phenomenon can be read as a symptom of contemporary society’s slide into a new, post-technological Middle Ages, in which rational decision-making gives way to emotions, intuition, and premonition.
In his book Antropocień. Filozofia i estetyka po końcu świata (2021), Andrzej Marzec uses the titular concept to describe an era in which the human has ceased to function as the sole centre of meaning and agency. He emphasises that the Anthropocene is not only a geological or climatic issue, but also a philosophical and aesthetic one. Art, culture, and thought must therefore take into account the post-human condition, multispecies coexistence, relationality, and responsibility toward other forms of being. Art for the End of the World proposes a deconstruction of the anthropocentric gaze. Art shifts toward what comes “after the human,” or toward forms of coexistence between human and non-human actors. The titular “end of the world” may thus be understood as the end of a particular mode of human dominance and the beginning of a different order, one in which the human is only one of many agents, rather than the sole master of the world.
The exhibition also invites us to ask what forms of art are adequate to the time in which we live, the end of one era and the beginning of another. Izabella Gustowska’s film, made in 1979, is a spontaneous manifesto of the sisterly duality of twins. It presents a vision of intuitive, wordless communication, pointing to the possibility of relationships grounded in curiosity and trust. Created more than forty years later, Ola Winnicka’s music video Siory also engages with the idea of sisterhood, this time situated within a broader urban context. In both works, choreography plays a central role, as the figures express their emotions through distinct gestures and movements. Bringing the exhibition to a close, Marysia Lewandowska’s Dismantling the Faculty of Law searches for a voice of hope within the empty halls of the Collegium Iuridicum in Poznań. Perhaps the theory of kindness formulated many years ago by Czesław Znamierowski offers one way of mitigating the effects of overlapping crises. Znamierowski argued that human beings are inherently social, and that the foundation of morality should be kindness, understood not as emotional affection but as a conscious, sustained commitment to the good of others and to avoiding harm. Kindness, in this sense, forms the basis of social coexistence, enabling communities to function harmoniously. Moral norms acquire meaning only within the context of interpersonal relations and serve to sustain a shared social order. Znamierowski sought to develop a scientific ethics free from religious assumptions, grounded instead in reason and social experience.
The question of what art for the end of the world can be, or should be, may be answered paradoxically, following Jerzy Ludwiński: “it can be anything.” Art for the end of the world, or perhaps art at the end of the world, holds the potential to free itself from constraints imposed, among other things, by an anthropocentric way of seeing. It does not need to rely on a single, fixed interpretation, but can instead embrace what is indeterminate and elusive. The works presented in the gallery resist exhaustive reading; they always leave room for intuition and emotion, for individual interpretation. Rather than offering definitive answers, the exhibition encourages a multidimensional and empathetic mode of looking.
curator: Marek Wasilewski
When I am in Ukraine, everyone asks me about Poland. When I am in Poland, everyone asks me about Ukraine is a multilayered solo exhibition by Polish artist and curator Waldemar Tatarczuk, offering Ukrainian audiences an in-depth look at his multifaceted creative identity.
The exhibition marks Tatarczuk’s return to his personal artistic practice after many years of directing Galeria Labirynt in Lublin, a city that is 100 km from the Polish-Ukrainian border, where he focused on fostering the work of others. This experience deeply influenced his artistic language, shaping the key features of his practice: political awareness, attention to others, collaboration, and coexistence. A work which opens the exhibition — Moving Towards East — literally embodies both the political and artistic movement of the artist toward closeness with Ukrainian art, its support, and his continued presence within this cultural space.
The project unfolds in two parts. The first comprises works created in collaboration with Ukrainian artists and long-term friends and colleagues who accepted Tatarczuk’s invitation to engage in joint artistic dialogue. This section echoes the spirit of Galeria Labirynt, which under his leadership became an experimental institution with a distinctly anti-institutional ethos. During times of political and social turbulence in Poland, Labirynt remained active and responsive by following artistic rather than bureaucratic logic. The gallery also played a crucial role in supporting Ukrainian artists and fostering Polish–Ukrainian artistic exchange from the very beginning of Tatarczuk’s tenure.
The second part of the exhibition turns inward, presenting the artist’s individual works and performance documentation. This intimate and reflective space reveals a personal dimension that has long remained in the background of his collective efforts. While Dnipro audiences may already be familiar with Tatarczuk’s curatorial activities, this archival section highlights him as a key performance artist who, since the late 1980s, has consistently explored the intersection of the corporeal and the political, moving toward empathy, solidarity, and coexistence.
OPENING: 05/12/2025, 18.00 – 19.30
The window installation reinterprets the historical event of The Kitchen Debate* (1959) from a feminist perspective, highlighting how the idealization of domesticity and women’s roles became a tool of Cold War propaganda. Viewers become participants with their own bodies and gazes in a power game in which the private and the political spaces are inextricably intertwined.
Anna Eszter Setényi graduated from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in the visual design department and is currently a student of painting. Her works have been shown in group exhibitions, among others, at the Limes Gallery in Komárom and the Velencei-tavi Gallery. In her artistic practice, she explores the transhistorical relationship between women and work, with a clear focus on its socialist and capitalist poles.
* The Kitchen Debate was a series of impromptu exchanges, with the assistance of interpreters, between U.S. Vice President (later U.S. President) Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, at the opening of the American National Exhibition in Sokolniki Park, Moscow, on July 24, 1959. The exhibition featured a model of an entire house, which the American exhibitors claimed could be afforded in the United States. The house was filled with household and leisure equipment designed to showcase the achievements of the capitalist American consumer market.
Available for viewing: 0-24h, PUCCS Contemporary Art, 1084 Budapest, Víg u. 22.
Organized by: Parallel Art Foundation
Curator: Gábor Pintér
OPENING: 11/12/2025, 19.00, MSU, Black Box
A retrospective exhibition dedicated to the Genre Film Festival (GEFF), the first experimental film festival in the former Yugoslavia and the Eastern European space and one of the key places for forming structural film, conceptual art and broader avant-garde tendencies of the 1960s.
GEFF brought together authors and intellectuals from various fields – film, visual arts, philosophy, criticism, science, and design. Leading artists and intellectuals of that period participated in his juries, programs and discussions, among them: Dusan Makavejev, Vatroslav Mimica, Aleksandar Saša Petrović, Danilo Pejović, Radoslav Putar, Aleksander Bassin, Josip Vanishta, Vjenceslav Richter and many others.
The exhibition seeks to reopen GEFF as a place of dialogue and research. Original Geff films will be presented to the audience, as well as a rich archive documentation: photographs, magazines, letters, scripts, posters, newspapers, newsletters, transcripts of conversations and other materials that testify to the layered history of the festival.
Artist Katalin Ladik will perform a multimedia performance Foreign Body / Foreign Substance in which she will communicate and comment on herself from the 1970s through video projection and live performances. of the century.
More: http://www.msu.hr/dogadanja/geff-63-69/1847.html
Illustration: Optional view of the world no. 4, Mišo Budisavljević, 1970
Oh Santa, what a treat!
Pragovka Gallery in Prague invites you to their traditional Art Fér at Pragovka, where for the very first time you will be able to purchase original artworks directly in the studios of our resident artists.
Join us on 7 December between 12 and 6 pm and visit the studios of Kateřina Adamová Linhartová, Natalia Akovantseva, Jana Babincová, Studio BLATO, David Helán, Martina Chloupa with guest artist Sylvie Choisnel, Jakub Janovský, Terezie Kusbach Kolářová, Veronika Landa, Martin Matoušek, Oldřich Navrátil, Petra Navrátilová, Richard Nestler, Zuzana Růžičková, Robert Slezák, Michal Synek, Pavel Tichoň, Lawrence Wells and Kamila Zawadská. Treat yourself to a selection of original art at fair prices, and not only as gifts under the tree.
You can also look forward to a festive accompanying programme including Christmas themed workshops for children and adults, a guided tour of the studios, holiday treats at Factory Kafe and Christmas carols performed by a children’s choir.
Programme:
12:00–18:00 open art studios
12:00 children’s theatre performance Among the Tree Stumps by Studio Damúza
13:00–16:00 workshop on making Christmas ornaments and wreaths with kosmo_nauty
13:00–16:00 screen-printing workshop
16:00 guided tour through the open studios
18:00 Christmas choir performance by the Akademické gymnázium Štěpánská.
Further information here.
M17 CAC traditionally participates in the “New Directions” platform initiative and joins the announcement of an Open Call for artists to take part in the new large-scale, inter-institutional project, “Cloud Storage.”
Artists working with themes of memory, heritage preservation, reflecting on loss, and recovery are invited to participate in this Open Call. We welcome submissions in any medium, including painting, sculpture, video, photography, performance, installation, sound, digital art, and more.
Application Deadline: January 20, 2026
The project will be showcased across three major institutions:
– Modern Art Research Institute (MARI): late February 2026
– M17 Contemporary Art Center (M17 CAC): early March 2026
– National Academy of Arts of Ukraine (NAAU): middle of March 2026
Curators of the Project: Andrii Sydorenko, Iryna Yatsyk
The legend of the Library of Alexandria, where the most precious works of ancient philosophers were lost to flame, taught humanity a simple truth: one should not build a single perfect library, but thousands, scattered across the world. Today, as a new wave of barbarism sweeps across nations, this strategy remains no less urgent. Yet it is not only repositories of knowledge that are under threat, but ordinary people — the living bearers of culture.
Archives can be digitized, but collective memory cannot yet be fully uploaded to the cloud. For collective memory is not merely information; it is the lens through which we perceive our past, the framework that determines what we hold to be true, and what we dismiss as false.
Today, in a time of war, a new chapter is being written in Ukraine — not only in its history, but in its collective memory. Its most precious substance is the shared experience of enduring and overcoming hardship. This memory cannot be shattered by missiles or drones, for it is not confined to a single trench or shelter. It lives wherever people remember who brought war to our land, and at what cost our freedom is won.
“Cloud Storage” is an invitation to reflect on:
“Our previous joint projects with the ‘New Directions’ platform — the exhibitions ‘Concentration of the Will’ (2023) and ‘Resilience Formula’ (2024) — proved to be a truly successful experience. They not only raised important, profound questions but also attracted a significant number of visitors, which is the best evidence of their public resonance.” – Nataliia Shpytkovska, Director of M17 CAC
“The project opens a space for interpretation, where the cloud archive becomes a metaphor for a living system. This year, the focus turns to exploring the multilayered collective memory of Ukrainian culture as a dynamic network of interwoven symbols, practices, and recollections.” — Iryna Yatsyk, curator
“If archives can be digitized, collective memory cannot yet be entirely uploaded to the cloud. Collective memory is not just about information, but about how we perceive our past… It is not localized in one trench or bunker. It is everywhere people remember who came to us with war, and the price we pay for freedom.” — Andrii Sydorenko, curator
All types of media are welcome to participate in the project. Application form
Application Deadline: January 20, 2026
Announcement of results – early February 2026
For additional questions: ipsmproject/@/gmail/./com
Organised by M17 Contemporary Art Center, the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine, Modern Art Research Institute.
M17 Contemporary Art Center is a cultural institution that functions as an educational and research platform, an exhibition venue for Ukrainian and foreign contemporary art. The activities of the Center are aimed at creating a dialogue space for professional circles and all the representatives of the culture sector as a whole, at study and research of contemporary and related historical cultural processes. M17 supports art experiments, collaborations and international exchanges of experts, artists from various art fields, in order to integrate Ukrainian art into the world context.
The National Academy of Arts of Ukraine (NAAU) is a self-administered scientific institution that promotes the preservation and continuation of traditions in the field of art, art history and cultural studies, as well as support for art education and the scientific community of Ukraine. The Academy leads educational and research institutions.
Modern Art Research Institute of the NAA of Ukraine (MARI of the NAAU) is the only research institution in Ukraine that carries out fundamental scientific research in various fields of contemporary art, as well as practical and research studies, aimed at the formation of professional contemporary art and architecture, implementation of new art technologies and practices, the further formation of national culture, preparation and publication of monographs, collections of scientific papers on the main scientific directions of the Institute.
OPENING: 03/12/2025, 19.00 – 21.00
The construction site—for many a symbol of amplified, even toxic masculinity—is, for me, rather a place of exhaustion and fragility, where hidden fears, frustrations, and social and physical pressures accumulate. Patryk Kujawa
For the KVOST SchauFenster (window display), Patryk Kujawa presents a new installation that evokes both a shop window and a fitting room. Using salvaged construction materials and healing products, he creates fragile, raw spaces in which memories intertwine with sensual imagination. The work draws from autobiographical perspectives on sexuality and social background, moving within the tension between shame and the desire to reveal it.
Kujawa works with used drywall panels—so-called „Ein-Mann-Platten“ (one-man panels)—which he collects from people who no longer need them. The workwear garments come from his family archive or private donations and bear individual traces of use, labor, and bodily contact. These materials are complemented by paper and cardboard sculptures reminiscent of architectural models, lending the installation a provisional, model-like character.
Artist Statement
The construction site—for many a symbol of amplified, even toxic masculinity—is, for me, rather a place of exhaustion and fragility, where hidden fears, frustrations, and social and physical pressures accumulate. I come from a Polish working-class family in Szczecin; my father was a construction worker. His world—like that of many others—was shaped by physical depletion, quietly borne shame, and the constant effort to endure. Their dreams were tied to the painful acceptance of subordination.
This experience shapes my view—also as a queer person for whom the construction site is a place of vulnerability, threat, and desire. Equally ambivalent is the figure of the construction worker: on one hand, the sensitive father permeated by fear, forced to embody a role he could barely carry; on the other, the object of queer fantasy—physical, raw, and soft at once, desired through muscle and clothing alike.
Moisture, ointments, sweat, tears—they seep into the drywall with which I construct my spaces. The used drywall panels I collect, intended for insulating, hiding, and covering, come from failed building projects: remains of unrealized plans, abandoned endeavors, sudden ruptures (a breakup, a financial shift, a death). They reveal traces and fragments of possibilities that were never fulfilled.
*The KVOST window display is illuminated daily from 2 – 10 pm.
On 9 December at 19.00, cultural space RAA in Riga will host the launch of the publication WunderKombināts. Piekļuve / Access, kicking off a series of thematic publications intended as a satellite project, complementing the yearbook (WunderKombināts. Latvian Art Yearbook).
While smaller in scope, the series will retain the essential characteristics of WunderKombināts: a primary focus on the perspectives of local authors while also including the voices of foreign researchers; a visual essay sat alongside written texts; and bilingualism, for content accessibility to non-Latvian-speaking audiences.
The central theme of this publication – access – emerged naturally from conversations and observations in the local art scene. These were mostly about the lack of access to both material and intangible resources in the creative sphere, but also about freedom of speech and expression, the accessibility of art and its language to different audiences, agency over one’s time and other aspects, prompting reflections on accessibility and availability from very diverse angles. In other words, justifiably but largely arbitrarily, we have chosen to expand the meaning of the terms “accessibility” and “availability” into diverse contexts and perspectives within the art world, using them as tools for exploring new facets and approaches.
The authors of the publication address topics such as the accessibility of content, meaning, and physical environment to different audiences; the paradoxical coexistence of elitism and democracy in the art world; the approaches to “slowness” in the practices of artists and curators; the use of language in art texts and speech; the reclaiming of public spaces through the intertwining strategies of urban planning, political ativism and artistic practices; awareness of one’s privileges and limitations, as well as “access to freedom” (referring to Lina Michelkevičė’s essay in the publication), which has become particularly relevant in the context of recent events in Lithuania and Latvia, thinking about the safeguarding the independence of the cultural sphere and democracy. Often, issues of accessibility and availability are unconsciously marginalised because they are perceived very narrowly – primarily as only adapting the physical environment to people with certain functional limitations or, in the case of availability, the existence of certain services. In fact, thinking and talking about availability and accessibility is thinking and talking about fundamental values: rights and responsibilities, privileges and restrictions, power relations and freedoms. It seems that only in the moment of real or potential threat to them do we truly realise and appreciate the fundamentality of our freedoms, in art as in any other sphere.
The publication includes texts by Agnese Zviedre, Žanete Liekīte, Liāna Ivete Žilde, An Paenhuysen, Lina Michelkeviče, and a visual essay by Liene Pavlovska. WunderKombināts. Piekļuve / Access is published by Wunder Kombinat, edited by Elīna Ķempele, designed by Anete Krūmiņa, and printed by Jelgavas tipogrāfija.
The publication will be available for purchase after 9 December. It will be available at a special price for the first time at the opening event.
After a closer look at the publication and meeting its creators and authors during the informally formal part of the opening, a concert by Miķelis Dzenuška’s jazz trio will follow at 20.00. Musicians: Miķelis Dzenuška (vibraphone), Daniēls Pelcis (bass) and Uģis Upenieks (percussion). The music created by Miķelis Dzenuška, which the composer himself describes as “democratic”, incorporates elements of jazz, funk, and academic music, complemented by a spark of humor and irony.The series of thematic publications is being created in parallel with the publication WunderKombināts. Latvian Art Yearbook, which focuses on critical analysis of Latvian art developments not only within the framework of art theory, but also in a broader context of relevant cultural and sociopolitical processes. The yearbook has been published since 2022, but the project is taking a break in 2025 (the yearbook will not be published this year).
OPENING: 21/11/2025, 19.00
The exhibition is a series of historical portraits of queer artists from Poland, presenting their work and contribution to culture. The exhibition has grown from the desire to find in history people who created, loved and lived their own way, although their traces have often been erased or ignored.
As Nikodem Szymura explains, it is a space designed to get to know yourself and your history, as well as to preserve and anchor it in today’s reality, which tries to deny us the possibility of finding ourselves among the mitigated, adjusted to current political tendencies portrayals of well-known characters, such as Maria Konopnicka, or quite the opposite, the forgotten ones, buried because of their queer identity, such as Piotr Odmieniec-Włast.
Many similar stories, beautiful and difficult lives, so reminiscent of ours, though taking place centuries ago, were lost or simplified to friendship, illness, rebellion…
Nikodem Szymura – writer and artist, passionate about self-development, constantly trying new things, and educating yourself and others. He draws inspiration from ecology, the experience of being transgender, and nature. He is a member of the artist-activist collective TransCendens.