The Shadow of Freedom

’They were always fighting for something the bastards and if anyone dared say the hell with fighting it’s all the same each war is like the other and nobody gets any good out of it why they hollered coward. If they weren’t fighting for liberty they were fighting for independence or democracy or freedom or decency or honor or their native land or something else that didn’t mean anything. The war was to make the world safe for democracy for the little countries for everybody. If the war was over now then the world must be all safe for democracy. Was it? And what kind of democracy? And how much? And whose?’ / Dalton Trumbo, ‘Johnny Got His Gun’

Exhibition ‘The Shadow of Freedom’ is a look at the history of the past century through art. It is shown in the works of artists from different generations. Familiar and strange stories, myths and legends, collective and individual lives are viewed from the perspective of nostalgic memory, ironic distance or mystification. They include testimonies of trauma and taboo subjects shamefully silenced in the ’light narratives’. History narrated in this way is not the same as history presented from a lofty perspective. It shows the complexity of life not in a blinding light but in a shadow that soothes the eye and allows seeing subtle nuances.

Artists participating in the exhibition: Mirosław Bałka, Józef Robakowski, Krystyna Pasterczyk, Tadeusz Kantor, Jerzy Truszkowski, Przemysław Kwiek, Kamil Kuskowski, Karolina Grzywnowicz, Michał Smandek, Zbigniew Libera, Paweł Althamer, Grzegorz Klaman, Wojciech Prażmowski, Mikołaj Szpaczyński, Martyna Kielesińska, Radek Szlęzak, Piotr Zarębski