Poland’s new government has scrapped the submission conceived under the previous nationalist-populist administration for the country’s Venice Biennale pavilion and replaced it with an interactive show by a Ukrainian art collective, provoking complaints of “censorship” from the artist originally tasked with the Polish entry.
Consisting of 35 works by the artist Ignacy Czwartos, including a painting of Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin connected by a flaming St Andrew’s cross in the shape of a swastika, the original submission had drawn criticism from within the Polish art community for heavily leaning into a narrative of national victimhood.
The note stated that his pavilion was at odds with this year’s inclusive theme at the 60th iteration of the world’s largest contemporary art event, which opens on 20 April.
Entitled Repeat After Me, the film features interviews with forcibly displaced Ukrainian people from different regions of the country’s east and south, who narrate their memories of the war through the sounds they remember.
Originally filmed at a refugee camp in Lviv, the video installation was first shown at the Labirynt Gallery in the Polish city of Lublin in November 2022.
Openness, tolerance, care, empathy, and opposition to armed conflicts and responds to the overarching theme of the Venice Biennale – Foreigners Everywhere!”
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