Polish Pavilion in Venice

What does the Polish Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Art Biennale look like?

Marta Czyż: The Polish Pavilion is an arranged military bar this year, a karaoke of the future. Two films from 2022 and 2024 with the common title ‘Repeat After Me II’ are screened there. This is a group portrait of war refugees from Ukraine by Open Group artists Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach and Anton Varga. In the 2022 film, they are internally displaced persons recorded in Lviv in internal refugee camps from western Ukraine. The second film is also refugees, but already dispersed around the world. The second film shows that the war is continuing, escalating, and the hope of 2022 has diminished, the enthusiasm and desire to help has subsided. It shows that we are taking part in a marathon of war that we may not always have the strength for, and that images of war are easy to get used to. The installation also shows refugee geography in two aspects: Ukrainians had to abandon their homes eventually, they are already in different places in the world, because refugeeism has no single location, it is a search for any reasonably safe place. This is important in the context of the second film.

The message of the films is universal. The theme of the entire festival, by the way, is Foreigners everywhere.

In the second film, the one from 2024, witnesses to the war tell us that there are people from all over the world at Tegel Airport - from Afghanistan or Syria. So they speak in the voices of all refugee people. The work is about Ukraine, but in fact Ukrainians can be swapped for all other victims of armed conflict. These sounds they repeat in safe places are a kind of warning or caution, because we don't know when they will end up in other cities. We do not know, for example, what will happen to Poland when Ukraine loses the war with Russia.

And how is the karaoke formula used here?

Civilian war refugees narrate the war with memorised gun sounds and then invite the audience to repeat them. In this case, however, the accompaniment is not well-known hits, but gunshots, cannonades, howls and explosions, and the lyrics are descriptions of deadly weapons. This is the soundtrack of war.

How does the Polish Pavilion compare with the others?

The Polish pavilion has been breaking out of the national traditional structure of the Venice pavilions for years. Curators have begun to ask themselves what ‘national’ means. That's why Indigenous Australians are shown in Australia. We are showing that art in a Polish Pavilion does not necessarily have to be Polish. It has to show something important to us, but presented by artists from a neighbouring country. The problem concerns us because it is across our border, close by. But it concerns people from all over the world. When we enter this exhibition we don't have to read the curatorial text, the exhibition is very communicative. We repeat the sounds we hear or sit at the bar and read the leaflet with warnings on how to behave when attacked. On leaving the pavilion, we leave with a survival manual. This could be useful to anyone. This is not the first time we have shown foreign artists in the Polish pavilion. We are trying to show problems more universally.
Our Pavilion also contrasts sharply with the Russian Pavilion, which has been made available to Bolivia, with which it has, after all, a signed leadership contact. Bolivia is a nuclear partner of Russia. That is to say, our Pavilion is an anti-war option, Russia gestures towards Bolivia, further fuelling the war.

Which Pavilions do you recommend to see if one goes to Venice?

The two next to ours: the Egyptian one (Wael Shawky), the Romanian one (Șerban Savu), but also the Belgian one (Petticoat Government), the Kosovo one (Doruntina Kastrati).

Marta Czyż – an art historian, independent curator and critic, she lives and works in Warsaw. Her practice draws on archives and recent developments in art history to influence culture and social movements. She explores the history of exhibitions in Poland and the curatorial profession.

She has prepared exhibitions in Poland at the CCA Ujazdowski Castle and Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, BWA Zielona Góra; MOS Gorzów; National Museum in Szczecin and elsewhere. In 2020, she curated the 10th Contexts Festival of Ephemeral Arts in Sokołowsko and the 9th Youth Triennale at the Centre for Polish Sculpture in Orońsko. In 2022, she joined Yuriy Biley in putting together the Society of Discouragement exhibition at the History Meeting House in Warsaw. She regularly publishes in the art-related press (Dwutygodnik, Vogue Polska, Polityka, miejmiejsce, Wysokie Obcasy, Camera Austria, follow.art). In 2015, she and Julia Wielgus released the book In the Frame of the Exhibition – Conversations with Curators (in Polish). She has been granted a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, and is a member of the AICA.

Оpen Group collective was founded in August 2012 in Lviv by six Ukrainian artists. The group’s members have changed over the years, and at present they are: Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach and Anton Varga. Artists are involved in Open Group until the project in which they are taking part is completed. The group’s work is based on exploring interaction between people and contextual spaces, creating the so-called open situations. Performativity and cooperation with viewers and participants are important parts of their work.

Open Group’s members have run independent art spaces, such as Detenpyla Gallery (since 2011) and Еfremova26 Gallery (2013–14) in Lviv (Ukraine).They won a Special Prize at the PinchukArtCentre Prize in 2013, and the Main Prize in 2015. Their works were featured at the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 56th International Art Exhibition in Venice. In 2016, the Open Group curated a show entitled Dependence Degree, Collective Practices of Young Ukrainian Artists 2000–2016 (Wrocław, Poland). In 2017, the group’s work was presented as part of the Future Generation Art Prize@Venice 2017 (an event accompanying the 57th Biennale). In 2019, the Open Group was the curator of the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 58th Biennale. In 2024, the Open Group will represent Poland at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia with the Repeat after Me II project.

Open Group’s works have been exhibited at such institutions as Albertinum, Dresden; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe; National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv; Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle (Netherlands); Belvedere 21 Museum of Contemporary Art, Vienna; Labirynt Gallery, Lublin (Poland); Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York; PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv; Jam Factory Art Center, Lviv (Ukraine); 4th Autostrada Biennale, Prizren (Kosovo); The School of Kyiv – Kyiv Biennial 2015; and ARS AEVI Museum, Sarajevo.