14 May – 24 July 2022
Exhibition curators: Dorota Jarecka, Paulina Olszewska
Supported by: Boris Lurie Art Foundation, New York
The American invasion of Vietnam in 1965 sparked world-wide protests. The alternative culture that emerged in the West partly because of these protests and then led to the revolt of May 1968 has been the subject of many exhibitions and books. However, the impact of the Vietnam War and the worldwide process of decolonization on the societies and cultures of socialist countries is not as widely known. Beginning in 1945, the countries of the Eastern Bloc closely observed the conflict in Indochina. In Poland, the first official line of anti-colonial policy appeared at the Wrocław Peace Congress in 1948. It was based on binaries: the East versus the West, socialism versus imperialism (often equated with fascism). The exhibition draws attention to the artistic culture of the 1960s and 1970s, when artists began to search for common ground with the representatives of their generation in the West, similarly interested in Pop Art and conceptual art. Avoiding the official language of propaganda, they sought to protest against war and colonial violence from a left-wing, liberatory perspective. These are the works by Wolf Vostell, Ulrike Ottinger and an installation by Astrid Klein, collages and spatial compositions by Boris Lurie and Sam Goodman, representatives of the NO!art movement, as well as works by Nancy Spero, Yayoi Kusama, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Jarosław Kozłowski, Andrzej Strumiłło, Alfred Lenica, and the SAB group. We also present works by Jerzy Ryszard Zieliński (Jurry) and Piotr Kunce from the Studio Gallery collection. Przemysław Branas will create an installation especially for the exhibition. Political posters by international artists from the collections of the Poster Museum at Wilanów will also be a part of the show.
Artists: Art Workers’ Coalition (US), Przemysław Branas (PL), Sam Goodman (US), Wolfgang Frankenstein (DE), Astrid Klein (DE), Grzegorz Kowalski (PL), Jarosław Kozłowski (PL), Piotr Kunce (PL), Yayoi Kusama (US/JP), Jean-Jacques Lebel (FR), Alfred Lenica (PL), Boris Lurie (US), Leandro Mbomio Nsue (GNQ), Ulrike Ottinger (DE), Grupa SAB (PL), Nancy Spero (US), Andrzej Strumiłło (PL), Jerzy Ryszard „Jurry” Zieliński (PL), Wolf Vostell (DE), posters by György Kemény, Emilio Vedova, Frémez, Alfredo Juan Rostgaard Gonzáles, Phan Thông, Pham Háo, Borys Reszetnikow
Loans have been acquired from the following institutions and individuals: Boris Lurie Art Foundation, New York, The Wolf Vostell Estate, Ulrike Ottinger, Sprüth Magers, Galerie Lelong & Co., Kunstsammlung Pankow, Berlin, Grzegorz Król, Grzegorz Kowalski, Jarosław Kozłowski, Pola Magnetyczne Gallery, Muzeum Plakatu – Oddział Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie, Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi.
The exhibition is accompanied by a series of meetings and discussions:
14 May 2022, Saturday, 18:00-21:00, exhibition opening (the exhibition will be open until midnight as a part of the Night of the Museums event)
22 May 2022, Sunday, 13:00, a guided tour around the exhibition by Magda Lipska, curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw [in Polish]
7 June 2022, Tuesday, 19:00, “Decolonizing the Swamps”, a lecture by Michał Pospiszyl [in Polish]
27 June 2022, Monday, 19:00, “All the Wars of the World”, a lecture by Tomasz Szerszeń [in Polish]
12 July 2022, Tuesday, 19:00, “History Without Images”, a meeting with Sergine André, a Haitian artist living and working in Belgium [in Polish and French]
19 July 2022, Tuesday, 19:00, a meeting with Ton Van Anh accompanied by a screening of her film “Warszawiacy” [Eng. “Varsovians”] and a discussion about the Vietnamese community in Poland [in Polish]
