Curated by Artur Żmijewski with Joanna Warsza and Voina
Recognizing how often the “progressive” politics of contemporary art is merely a fig leaf for its easy fit with neoliberalism, the Polish artist Artur Żmijewski here attempts to translate his faith in what he once called “applied social arts” into the sphere of exhibition making. This show offers an opportunity to consider the sharpness of his arguments against the art world’s complacency (evident in an impassioned interview on the biennial’s website) alongside the work of some forty artists, including Paweł Althamer’s public drawing event Draughtsmen’s Congress, 2012; a new installment of Yael Bartana’s project chronicling a utopian Jewish renaissance in Poland; and Łukasz Surowiec’s transplantation of birch trees from Auschwitz to parks and schoolyards around Berlin.
