Droga Przyszłości / Дороге майбутнє / Dear Future
Exhibition in the Warsaw urban space. We wonder what kind of art, if any, is viable in wartime and what topics it could or should explore?
Dear Future,
We are writing to you to suggest that we take time together to think about who you can be. Our world is once again plunged into new-old crises and wars. As long as Russian missiles continue to fall on Ukrainian soil, for us, Ukrainian cultural workers and Polish allies, you remain uncertain.
We reflect on the fundamental changes that have taken place around us since the beginning of 2022. Any curatorial or exhibition practice has been trivialised in the face of the shelling, torture, mass deportations and countless war crimes that the Russian state is committing daily in Ukraine. We ask questions about ways in which communication between communities and states has changed, about the role of art and culture in the process, and what is more relevant now - a reaction or a calculated detachment? We wonder what kind of art, if any, is viable in wartime and what topics it could or should explore?
Dear Future is an attempt to cope with the realities of today. Thinking about the future is therapeutic to help cope with the here and now. The unknown is imbued with darkness, but also, as Rebecca Solnit wanted, with hope and persistence. We describe this condition by writing a 'Letter to the Future', and the public space exhibition is a 'message in a bottle'. Dear Future presents photographs on outdoor advertising media scattered in the urban space, on small display monitors in trams and on large LED monitors in the underground. The works of individual artists and art collectives illustrate a spectrum of issues that cannot be ignored in today's discourse: traumatic memory, information, social response, volatility of symbolic meanings. In light of today's events, the Polish and Ukrainian art scene is facing another challenge and a new wave of solidarity. All this is taking place on the streets of Warsaw, a city that experienced the horrors of wartime destruction less than eighty years ago.
Duration: 16 – 29 January 2023
Curators: Anita Nemet, Yulia Krivich
Artists: Fantastic Little Splash, atelienormalno, Danylo Halkin, Maria Matiashova, Nazar Furyk, Anna Manankina, Vasyl Lyakh, Travelers Settle (Izabela Wilk), SDK Słonecznik (Kaja Kusztra), Mateusz Kowalczyk
Organisers: Galeria Promocyjna, Old Town Cultural Centre, Mieroszewski Centre
Partners: Warsaw Museum of Modern, SDK Słonecznik, ZAiKS, Galeria Studio, HOP, Syrena Real Estate, PineBridge Benson Elliot, PURO Hotels
