thursday, 28 march Open 12 — 19
Municipal Gallery Arsenał

ul. Szyperska 2/6-8, 61-754 Poznań
T. +48 61 852 95 02
E. arsenal@arsenal.art.pl

Opening hours:

Poniedziałek: nieczynne
Wtorek – Sobota: 12 — 19
Niedziela: 12 — 16

Poles, Patriots, Rebels
promocja książki i dyskusja o najnowszej sztuce feministycznej w Polsce
12.03.2019, g. 18.00

A collection of academic texts devoted to the latest feminist art in Poland, outlining new post-feminist narratives in the face of questions about the exhaustion of previous narratives and styles. The book refers to current problems related to the situation of women in Poland, such as black protests and the attendant art actions. The key issue is contemporary artivism, a phenomenon combining art and social and political activism. The book is a summary of an exhibition of the same title and a scientific session, both held at Arsenał Municipal Gallery in 2017.

Editor: Izabela Kowalczyk; text authors: Agata Araszkiewicz, Patrycja Cembrzyńska, Izabela Kowalczyk, Karolina Rosiejka, Karolina Sikorska, Marta Smolińska, Magdalena Ujma, and Karolina Wilczyńska; photographs: Diana Lelonek.


participants: Izabela Kowalczyk, Roman Kubicki, Zofia nierodzińska, Marta Smolińska

moderator: Justyna Ryczek


"Izabela Kowalczyk's book is an important element of the debate on <<female issues>> and women's art. It reflects the key problems of current life in Poland and the ways in which they are conceptualized; the introductory text of the editor makes a precise diagnosis of the state of the debate, and the individual authors of the published articles exemplify this diagnosis for good and bad. The main problem of the art addressed here is how to deal with important topics and at the same time not to succumb to either tabloidization or encapsulation of discourse; how to make art which reaches the heart today yet has also a universal potential. In short, Kowalczyk believes that the goal of the feminist movement should be a profound social change, since the democratic changes in Poland after 1989 not only bypassed women's rights, but crammed them into an oppressive system of anachronistic phantasms. As far as art is concerned, any ideas with emancipatory background and interesting form are welcome (...) The book is a very personal continuation of the revolution that Kowalczyk created in the Polish art history in the 1990s. The author does not divide girls into wise and foolish virgins, does not preach to them, does not punish them. She  builds a front for everyone willing to join in. This is a great strategy!

From a review by Prof. Dr Hab. Anna Markowska