The Global Artist

This title heads our display of works by artists focusing on confronting the local context they originate from and carry within with other contexts of a globalised, networked, and increasingly post-national world. These artists represent a new way of considering identity; in their projects, Polishness is perceived from a distance, in unexpected connections and references.

These works may be considered a reaction to the so-called new national art and to defining Polishness in national and religious categories only. Artists we have dubbed global make an effort to consider the issue in a broader context, showing its unexpected flip sides, and liberating it from its permanent weight. This may be comprehended as an attempt to identify new Polish form, free of continuous efforts to modernise and to reach levels represented by centres of civilisation.

The centre - peripherals relation is replaced with a description of relations between the marginal and the peripheral, one much more fascinating and telling a much better story about us. In this section, we show i.a. a piece by Jan Simon – an attempt at a Nigerian Nollywood remake of Andrzej Wajda’s "Ashes and Diamonds," and a work by Slavs and Tatars, confronting the Iranian revolution of 1979 with the Solidarity uprising.