Familiar Strangers. Many Polands

Group exhibition featuring works by Assaf Gruber, Eva Prusiewicz, Janek Simon, Jasmina Metwaly, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Ngo Van Tuong, Oliwia Bosomtwe, OPJ Cyganek & Julie Poulain, Renata Rara Kamińska, Shadow Architecture, Zuzanna Hertzberg; and works from the Frac Lorraine collection by Emma Dajska, Ewa Partum, Natalia LL, Teresa Murak.

The exhibition challenges the myth of a homogeneous national storyline to address the diversity that constitutes a culture’s various layers. By focusing on the migratory movements that have shaped Poland’s culture, while tracing connections to Lorraine, it reveals forgotten chapters of the its history. The works showcase the extent to which this country—which often casts itself as a homogeneous nation—contains a multitude of parallel histories, including those of the social and cultural minorities that constitute it. Echoing the ties of the artists with Poland—whether through residence, birth, or family roots—coexisting histories connected through diasporic links continue to shape this complex and rich geographical area.

Shaped among others by the history of the communist bloc, Poland found itself by extension associated with “Eastern Europe” in cultural and geopolitical terms too. Its history of migration is intertwined with this specific geography, which notably linked Communist countries from across the globe backdrop—a backdrop which also informed its experience of imperialism and approach to feminism. The shifting division between Eastern and Western Europeans—a distinction which was always more about ideology than geography—was challenged following the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and the geopolitical changes that came afterwards. More recently, the war in Ukraine has raised a new awareness around the symbolic position of Eastern Europe, as similar and yet different.

The exhibition plays with the boundaries of visibility—what is revealed or remains concealed, what we are able to recognise or identify. It approaches the concept of identity foremost as a way of perceiving others or oneself that fluctuates according to context, history, and the narratives associated with it. The exhibition’s title is taken from Stuart Hall’s posthumous autobiography, Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands (2017). Drawing on his work, the exhibition casts the nation as an entity that is ideological. A cultural construct, it is linked to histories both real and imagined; these can give rise to feelings of belonging or rootlessness—but also to transnational solidarities.

Curated by Joanna Warsza and Fanny Gonella, in dialogue with Sophie Potelon.

Degrés Est: Aurélie Jouanen
Aurélie Jouanen has been invited to exhibit in the Degrés Est space, dedicated to artists with links to the Grand Est region, following a proposal by Bérénice Saliou, director of the Frac Champagne-Ardenne. Aurélie Jouanen explores power relations and social violence through the mediums of painting, performance, installation and publishing. By focusing on the rise of security policies, the artist brings to light figures who are usually rendered invisible.

At Frac Lorraine, the artist will present a series of paintings dedicated to the gestures of security officers, engaging with the medium of painting, which has historically been associated with power. By choosing to create portraits of figures usually kept in the shadows, the artist questions the ambivalence of the cultural world, which is both a tool of domination and a potential space for emancipation.