Bozar exhibition explores Eastern Europe from Polish perspective
The latest exhibition at Brussels art centre Bozar uses audiovisual and painting techniques to explore the evolution of Eastern Europe from a Polish perspective.
Familiar Strangers features work by 13 Polish artists and is intended as an encounter between voices and identities in a region that was long considered culturally homogeneous during the Soviet period.
The starting point is a perspective of diaspora and cultural heterogeneity in the Polish context. The artists each have their own room in which to experiment with interweaving social and political struggle with personal stories.
Stories of Roma, Vietnamese socialist intellectuals and Belarussian and Ukrainian artists in Poland are featured. The exhibition features paintings, video art and textiles.
Past and future
The exhibition's curator is Joanna Warsza, city curator of Hamburg, who is originally from Warsaw.
“While the world is heading in a disturbing and violent direction, the exhibition shows the image of a non-violent and multicoloured European collective in which we can live together as ‘familiar strangers’ against the confiscation of democracy,” she says.
"It speaks to our uncertainty and offers hope that we will find new ways of looking at ourselves and the people around us"
The exhibition “looks both forward and back to the past”, says Zoë Gray, director of exhibitions at Bozar. It “speaks to our uncertainty and offers hope that we will find new ways of looking at ourselves and the people around us”.
The exhibition brings together 49 works by Polish artists including Jana Shostak, Zuzanna Hertzberg, Janek Simon, Assaf Gruber and Oliwia Bosomtwe.
It is part of Bozar’s Focus on Poland season, a series of talks, films, art and music to mark Poland’s presidency of the Council of the European Union.
The opening of Familiar Strangers at Bozar, Brussels, 13 March 2025 © BELGA PHOTO STEPHANIE LINSINGH
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