‘Familiar Strangers. The Eastern Europeans from a Polish Perspective’: Multiple stories spotlight minorities

Illuminating the social struggles of minority communities across Eastern Europe, the contemporary art exhibition Familiar Strangers at Bozar is a timely exploration of the disparate region.

This reflection on Eastern Europe - part of Poland’s EU Council presidency cultural programme - brings together 40 works by 13 artists that range from paintings and sculpture to videos, installations and textiles.

The focus is on personal stories by diasporas and minorities such as Polish Jews, Roma, Vietnamese socialists-turned-capitalists, feminist and queer communities and Belarusian and Ukrainian artists in Warsaw. Their multiple voices relating social and political struggles over past decades create a series of compelling narratives.

As Hamburg-based Polish curator Joanna Warsza says: “While the world is going in a disturbing and violent direction, the ideas of the exhibition pull the other way, towards the image of a non-violent and plural European collective with its West, its East, its North and its South, in which we can live together as familiar strangers against the confiscation of democracy.”

She recalls her own experience growing up in Poland in the 1980s and feeling that “the real Europe was somewhere else” to explain the premise of the exhibition. “Many of us inhabiting Europe do not identify ourselves as Europeans. Any yet it might be a moment in which we should start to do so, for good or bad.”

Each artist has a dedicated if confined space within the exhibition. It opens with a colourful totem-like sculpture by Polish conceptual artists Janek Simon, displayed against a background filled with small figurines. Inspired by global travels, Meta Folklore has been generated by database images of folklore and 3D printing to raise questions about the concept of identity, while also showing how artificial intelligence can serve as a social tool.

A series of paintings by Mikolaj Sobczak bearing richly dense compositions are filled with historical and mythological references to repression, from serfdom to transgender. In one work depicting the Compton’s Cafeteria riot in the US in 1966, the artist pays tribute to the importance of gestures of resistance, however small.

Reversing the stereotypical image of Roma people is the motivation of Polish-Roma artist Malgorzata Mirga-Tas, whose bright textile works relate a pan-European history. Alongside portraits of female activists, she shows the white buses that transported survivors of WWII concentration camps to Sweden, but banned Roma people. Adding to the loaded visual imagery is her practice of incorporating or “throwing” pieces of fabric or objects such as earrings or buttons onto her work that are donated by her subjects. 

Egyptian-Polish artist and filmmaker Jasmina Metwaly deconstructs military uniforms within the context of the Arab spring revolution. The former activist in the uprising presents three characters in re-tailored garb with phones strung across their chests showing the video installation Anbar, which documents the solidarity between Egyptians and resistance movements. They recall the layering of military costume that she and her fellow activists donned to camouflage themselves among the protesting crowds.

Chilling sounds greet visitors in Repeat After Me, a project devoted to the witnesses of the ongoing war in Ukraine by Ukrainian collective Open Group that was shown at the Venice Biennale in 2024. Two separate large screens show a succession of civilians recounting the conflict via the various noises that different weapons make. They then invite people to repeat the emotive sounds. Filmed in a domestic refugee camp it transmits the horror of war while providing protagonists with a healing action.

In the gallery area overlooking Bozar’s grand Horta Hall, installations include Shadow Architecture’ ‘informal furniture’ from the multicultural Asian Town Bakalarska Market in Warsaw. In a similar vein, Ngo Van Tuong presents digital documentation from A Trip to Asia, a project recording a now-dismantled multicultural market in the Polish capital. An active member of the Vietnamese community, he came to Poland as a student in the 1980s and assumed various roles, from nail salon owner to translator.

Zuzanna Hertzberg (pictured above) describes herself as an artivist. The Jewish-born Pole recovers the stories of Jewish women activists and displays them in public spaces to transmit their stories of resistance. Here, she presents a series of striking banners and displays dedicated to forgotten women from history. Again they are layered with meaning, from their resemblance to domestic rugs used in Yiddish communities to motifs of medicinal herbs and plants that symbolise healing. Hertzberg aims for social justice, subverting what she calls the “sub-tenant’ contract accorded to minority communities. 

The exhibition concludes with two films by Assaf Gruber. Miraculous Accident recounts a love story between a Moroccan student and his Jewish teacher in 1968. The backdrop to their tale is her impending deportation due to her opposition to Zionism following the Six-Day War. Inspired by real people, Gruber’s work fuses fiction and documentary to show how life and culture become metaphors for society.

Familiar Strangers is accompanied by a series of multidisciplinary events at Bozar’s Focus on Poland programme. It also runs parallel to the arts centre’s other exhibitions: When We See Us, presenting a century of black figurative painting, and Berlinde De Bruyckere. Khorós, a solo show devoted to the contemporary Belgian artist.

Familiar Strangers. The Eastern Europeans from a Polish Perspective
Until 29 June
Bozar
Rue Ravenstein 23
Brussels

Photos: ©Kuba Celej/Adam Mickiewicz Institute (IAM); Janek Simon, photo Kuba Celej/IAM; Mikołaj Sobczak Mantis 2020 Courtesy of the artist and the Servais Family Collection; Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Przytradle kola so przedzidzile, 2023; Jasmina Metwaly, photo Kuba Celej/IAM; Repeat after me, still from video ©Open Group; photo by Yannick SAS; Assaf Gruber, Miraculous Accident, 2024, still from video