New line also at the Venice Biennale: Poland replaces the project chosen by the former nationalist government

Brussels – Things have changed in Poland with the new government led by the former president of the European Council, Donald Tusk. Or rather, the artistic preferences have changed. The new Minister of Culture has decided to replace the controversial design chosen by the previous administration for Warsaw’s pavilion at the 2024 edition of the Venice Biennale: a manifesto to Polish nationalism, which clashes sharply with Tusk’s staunch Europeanism. And with the theme of the 60th edition of the modern art kermesse: inclusiveness.

The pro-European turn promised by Tusk also comes through artistic storytelling: The Minister of Culture, Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, announced the withdrawal of the ‘Polish Practice in Tragedy: Between Germany and Russia’ project of artist Ignacy Czwartos, whose selection had already stirred up several critics in the Polish art community for its controversial political message. Thirty-five works of art depict scenes of violence perpetuated by German and Russian aggressors against Poles: one of the paintings features former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin next to a swastika-like St. Andrew’s cross.

Three members of the jury in charge of choosing the project had openly criticized the winner, saying in a letter that Czwartos’s proposed exhibition portrayed Poland as a “homogeneous, non-open country focused only on itself and on speaking from the position of the victim” and that it did not reflect “in any way the Polish contemporary art scene.” But the bid remained, at least until just before Christmas when the new Culture Minister fired the director of the National Gallery of Art Zachęta – who oversees the selection for the Biennale – replacing him with his former deputy director, Justyna Markiewicz.

In place of Czwartos’ thirty-five paintings, the Polish pavilion will host a video performance called Repeat After Me by Ukrainian art collective Open Group, a collection of the noises of war described by dozens of forcibly displaced Ukrainians.  Joanna Warsza, co-curator of the Polish Pavilion in 2022 and one of the signatories of the letter against Czwartos, said she was “enormously relieved” and convinced that “the Open Group proposal formally and ideologically presents the values we want to defend. Openness, tolerance, care, empathy, and opposition to armed conflict, which respond to the overall theme of the Venice Biennale – Foreigners Everywhere!”