Curatorial tour in English
We invite you to a curator-led tour of the exhibition This Cat Was Drawn During the War (curated by Anna Łazar and Lada Nakonechna).
The power of art — unlike propaganda — lies, among other things, in its ability to disrupt habitual ways of perceiving reality and to reveal doubts. It is within the field of contemporary art that meanings important to the community are negotiated. When engaging with a work of art, it is worth asking questions not only about its message and the means employed, but also about the sources from which its formal solutions derive. By interpreting and provoking reality, artists expose the dominant discourses of visual politics.
Does war change art? Yes, just as it changes human life. Most existing problems intensify, and new ones emerge.
The title of the exhibition This Cat Was Painted During the War only appears to be a simple statement. Firstly, it is not a cat (“ceci n’est pas une pipe” — “this is not a pipe”), even though it evokes associations with the dopamine-driven pleasure of viewing images online. The phrase was spoken by the artist Kateryna Libkind, emphasising that war imposes an inescapable frame on every situation.
Secondly, the verb “painted” plays with the common assumption that art is created through drawing, painting, or perhaps sculpting. Meanwhile, the works presented in the exhibition were created using other strategies.
Thirdly, we are confronted with a fundamental question about the direction of our own actions in a time of total crisis. Is there still room for critical reflection during wartime?
In this way, the exhibition addresses art created in response to war. It revisits the enduring imagery of the Second World War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and above all the war closest to us in time and geography — the war against Ukraine, whose struggle for freedom and survival we support. It is from the experience of this war that our exhibition emerges.
The works presented have been selected as a response to questions we asked ourselves as curators. Is art effective? What can we expect from it in times of crisis? How does it engage with key issues of public debate, including the experience of war, European identity, women’s rights, or decolonisation from the perspective of countries of the former socialist bloc? How does war affect our sensitivity, when documentation from sites of violence coexists on our screens with pop culture and AI-generated imagery? And can art help us imagine the world differently from what dominant narratives suggest?
- Curators
- Anna Łazar and Lada Nakonechna
- Artists
- Katya Buchatska (Ukraine), Peggy Buth (Germany), Wojciech Fangor (Poland), Ksenia Hnylytska (Ukraine), Agnieszka Kalinowska (Poland), Oksana Kazmina (Ukraine), Pavlo Khailo (Ukraine), Tarik Kiswanson (France/Palestine), Yulia Krivich (Poland/Ukraine), Aleksandra Kubiak (Poland), Zbigniew Libera and Darek Foks (Poland), Katya Libkind (Ukraine), Honorata Martin (Poland), Ivan Moudov (Bulgaria), Lada Nakonechna (Ukraine), Ilona Németh (Slovakia), Olaf Nicolai (Germany), Mariola Przyjemska (Poland), Tanel Rander (Estonia), Monika Sosnowska (Poland), Ivan Svitlychnyi (Ukraine), Miloš Trakilović (Bosnia and Herzegovina/Netherlands), Variable Name (Valeria Karpan and Maryna Marynichenko) (Ukraine), Mario de Vega (Mexico), Zbigniew Warpechowski (Poland)
