Familiar Strangers: The Eastern Europeans

Curated by Joanna Warsza, an international curator originating from Warsaw and currently the city curator of Hamburg, the exhibition is designed by Aleksandra Wasilkowska and features works by Oliwia Bosomtwe, Assaf Gruber, Zuzanna Hertzberg, Renata Rara Kamińska, Jasmina Metwaly, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Natalia LL, Ngo Van Tuong, Open Group, Janek Simon, Shadow Architecture, Jana Shostak and Mikołaj Sobczak.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Familiar Strangers: The Eastern Europeans is an exhibition of contemporary art reflecting upon recent changes in Eastern Europe situated in the context of Poland. Sadly, it is only since the violent invasion of Ukraine that the self-understanding of the European collective has expanded beyond the Western viewpoint and that the symbolic position of Eastern Europe, as similar and yet different, has been brought to light. The exhibition contemplates such political and social processes from the perspectives of those who enlarge its public sphere: the multiple, hybrid, critical identities in a region that was long considered to be culturally homogenous, even if this was never truly the case. 

Familiar Strangers: The Eastern Europeans is an encounter of various voices: specifically of diasporas and minorities and their political struggles, from the Roma people, the Vietnamese socialist intellectuals-cum-early capitalists or the Byelorussian and Ukrainian artists and activists in Warsaw. It addresses the complex history of the Polish-Jewish co-existence beyond the “subtenant contract”, in which the rights of some people are conditional and can be revoked. It traces the feminist and queer resistance, the impact of wilful or forced migration from, and increasingly, to Poland, and it shares what is to be a person of colour in a predominantly white society.

The exhibition shows how fragile and complex those two-way negotiations are, between the transcultural and the local, the individual and the collective, the familiar and the uncanny in a post-communist society on its way to becoming a post-migrant one. Its title is inspired by Stuart Hall, the late Jamaican British theorist, who wrote that culture is not a way of being—but of becoming with and despite others, towards a more just society.

Each gallery is inhabited by the world of a different artist, as if it was a room of their own, and they all meet in an informal shared space in the middle of the circuit. In Eastern Europe, during the communist dictatorship, the public sphere was often practiced in intimate settings, be it a kitchen or an apartment exhibition. Welcome to the worlds of some extraordinary "familiar strangers”, who, through their art and activism—between structures of oppression and spaces of possibility—forge a sense of place in the world, in Poland, in Europe and beyond.

This exhibition is co-organized by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Poland.

Artists
Assaf Gruber, Jana Shostak, Janek Simon, Jasmina Metwaly, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Mikołaj Sobczak, Natalia LL, Ngo Van Tuong, Oliwia Bosomtwe, Open Group, Renata Rara Kaminska, Shadow Architecture, Zuzanna Hertzberg

Curator: Joanna Warsza
In collaboration with: Anamaria Pazmiño
Exhibition design: Aleksandra Wasilkowska