HOMECOMING: 11th edition of Contexts Festival

HOMECOMING as a main theme of Contexts 2025—Festival of Ephemeral Art is a story about wandering, about the way back to a home that is no longer there or is not what it once was. It's a story of displacement, seen not only in the context of migration, but also of exile, where we don't make the decision to leave it alone. It's also a return in a mental sense, when significant changes take place in us, through which we perceive our immediate surroundings differently.

Contemporary migrations, whether forced (by war, climate crisis or economic hardship) or voluntary, make us think about what it actually means to return home. Is home a birthplace, a space of family memories, or rather a state of mind that we build anew in any corner of the world?

This year’s curator, Marta Czyż, is known for curating the Polish Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition—the Venice Biennale in 2024, together with Open Group, as well as for projects redefining the role of art in times of crisis.

"The program concept for the 11th edition of the Festival of Ephemeral Art Contexts in Sokołowsko draws on the thoughts of philosophers and cultural studies scholars such as Gaston Bachelard, who in The Poetics of Space described home as a place of refuge for the imagination and the topography of our intimate being, or Edward Said, who in Out of Place addressed the issue of unrootedness and life at the intersection of cultures. At the same time, we are inspired by the contemporary concepts of nomadism of Rosi Braidotti, who emphasizes the role of movement and migration as forms of identity in the era of globalization."—says curator Marta Czyż.

In the context of artistic traditions, the idea of homecoming refers to the wandering of art - both as a metaphor for the creative process and the real journeys of artists in search of inspiration, roots and audiences. At the same time, it points to the necessity of intergenerational dialogue - on the one hand referring to artistic heritage, on the other opening the field to new definitions of home, developed by younger generations. The events of this year's Festival will explore issues of home in the context of contemporary migration, both voluntary and forced. Festival guests, artists from Poland, some who have lived abroad for years, and from countries such as Ukraine and the Balkan states, will address in their works the unique experiences of migration, as well as attempts to redefine home under conditions of destabilization and mass migration.

Participants in the 11th edition include: Bartek Arobal, Weronika Balcerak & Lukas Bury, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Magda Buczek, Karolina Freino, Centrala (Simone de Iacobis, Małgorzata Kuciewicz), Philipp Gufler, Blerta Hashani, Blerta Haziraj, Kateryna Iakovlenko, Nikita Kadan, Zhanna Kadyrova, Alina Kleytman, Maria Magdalena Kozłowska, Ksenia Malykh, Filipka Rutkowska, Karol Radziszewski, Katarzyna Roj, Joanna Warsza & Övül Ö. Durmusoglu, Jan Sturckmeier, Joanna Synowiec, Waldemar Tatarczuk, Petro Vladimirov, Driant Zeneli and others.

Organized by In Situ Contemporary Art Foundation and subsidized by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland from the Culture Promotion Fund.