POLITICS: I DO NOT LIKE IT, BUT IT LIKES ME

12 APRIL – 2 JUNE 2013
Opening: 12 April, 7 p.m.

Artists: Jairo Alfonso, Alexandre Arrechea, Tomasz Bajer, Carlos Boix, Brumaria, Los Carpinteros, Jeannete Chavez, Democracia, Leandro Feal, Nicolas Grospierre, Diango Hernández, Agnieszka Kalinowska, Hamlet Lavastida, Glenda León, Glexis Novoa, Fernando Sánchez Castillo, Daniel Silvo, Piotr Wyrzykowski.

Curators: Dermis P. Leon, Agnieszka Kulazińska

12 April, 6 p.m. – meeting with the artists, presentation of the project Brumaria

21-25 May – finisage – movie screening curator: Madeleine Navarro Mena.

"Meanwhile, for many young artists now beginning their careers, the legacy of the 1980s, is "utopian" in the most pejorative sense of the word - it can be considered useless as an inheritance because of its fundamental unrealism. Young eyes look toward the global market rather than the revolutionary past." In New art of Cuba, Luis Camnitzer

Inspired by a song of a Cuban band Porno para Ricardo, the exhibition plays with the line Politics: I do not like it, but it likes me. We live in a context where politics play a key role in the field of representation and visibility so that artists have become demanding commodities. Like it or not, art is political. Art is the battle field where artists once again have to struggle for survival in the dramatic political-economic transition in Cuba, Poland and Spain.

From the periphery of the artistic mainstream, this exhibition addresses different issues of Cuban, Polish and Spanish transition. It studies the processes of social transformation, inward and outward identity construction, and the forms of representation in the context of Capitalism hegemony/ubiquity. In the course of their adaptation to the new reality, the artists have taken a critical look at modern capitalism and proclaimed "Art a territory of freedom". This thesis goes beyond merely aesthetic representations and examines in-depth the realms of politics and history. How does art covert itself into a tool of historical analysis and establishes its own territory of political activism and resistance?

This project aims to reflect on the mechanisms of distortion and destruction of a utopian system - first, through idealized perception and subsequently through ideological de-legitimation of socialist beliefs and their potential to enhance social progress. The historical knowledge of socialist past gets distorted and erased by the idealized perceptions. As a result, the historical context evaporates and gets replaced with the newly constructed interpretations of "Socialism" which inundate the global political arena. Many individuals would share the claims of corruption and inefficiency of so-called "socialist ethics" and political organization. However, what about the system that comes to replace it? What are we getting from the failure of Cuban socialism and the experience of new politico-economic transition? What are the options of resistance?

Mieczysław Struk the Marshal of the Pomorskie Voivodeship is the patron of the exhibition.

(Info via Madeleine Navarro Mena)