Common Landscape / Greeting a Stranger
28.03-25.05.2025
Arsenal Gallery power station, Białystok
13 Elektryczna St. (entrance from Świętojańska St.)

Curators: Yulia Kostereva, Yuriy Kruchak, NienTing Chen

Artists: Piotr Armianovski [UA]; atelienormalno (Artem Ibadulaev, Iryna Holoborodko, Yevhen Holubentsev, Katya Libkind, Anna Litvinova, Valentyn Radchenko, Anna Sapon, Valeriya Tarasenko, Stanislav Turina) [UA]; Maksym Buba [UA]; ChunTien Chen [TW]; Tiko Imnadze [GE]; Daniel Kotowski [PL]; Ghenadie Popescu [MD]; Stefan Rusu [MD]; Benas Sarka [LT]; Janek Simon [PL]; Mishiko Sulakauri [GE]; Walking Grass Agriculture (HanSheng Chen and HsingYou Liu) [TW]; MaLi Wu [TW]

The international group exhibition ‘Common Landscape / Greeting a Stranger’ presents works in various media of contemporary socially engaged artists from Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Taiwan and Ukraine.  The exhibition outlines a society living on a geopolitical fault line and trying to find the keys, the common ground on which we can build a more just future. Keeping the issues of decolonization and deimperialisation in focus, the artists' works rethink existing political and ideological constraints, geopolitical fractures, and fragmentation. ‘Common Landscape’ seeks to build bridges across diverse individual experiences and different contexts based on trust and solidarity. The exhibition asks how to represent a field where knowledge is only being created.

The exhibition Common Landscape / Greeting a Stranger is an artistic response to the events of recent years and their tangible consequences, which highlight the ineffectiveness of previous global conventions, significant geopolitical shifts and fractures, the fragmentation of democratic communities, and the willingness of certain countries to reshape the world order in favor of authoritarian regimes. Over the past four years, we have witnessed a series of critical developments: the migration crisis on the EU’s eastern border, which peaked in late 2021; the violent suppression of protests in Kazakhstan in early 2022; Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022; the third Karabakh war in September 2023 and the subsequent reintegration of Karabakh into Azerbaijan; large-scale Chinese military exercises simulating the encirclement and complete blockade of Taiwan, the most recent of which took place in October 2024; and the erosion of political freedoms in Georgia, accompanied by mass protests that have been ongoing since March 2023, reaching a peak in December 2024. Additionally, we have seen the rise of right-wing populist movements and their ascent to power in parts of Europe and the United States.

Globalization brings both challenges—manifesting as various global crises—and opportunities, particularly in fostering a deeper understanding of the modern world’s interconnectedness. The ongoing struggles for freedom and independence in Georgia and Taiwan, and especially the war and the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people, have compelled many countries to rethink their national and international priorities, more clearly define their paths of development, and reassess the significance of protecting freedom and justice.

The exhibition Common Landscape / Greeting a Stranger does not seek to resolve the contradictions of our time but rather takes them as a starting point for discussions on solidarity in the present and the pursuit of a just future. Its central idea is to showcase the practices of artists who, through the lens of their personal needs, desires, and concerns, not only depict the social realities of their countries but also actively contribute to change. Their actions are inherently performative—understood here as actions that provoke tangible effects.

While Common Landscape / Greeting a Stranger places particular emphasis on artistic processes in Poland and neighboring countries such as Ukraine, Lithuania, and Moldova, it also employs the perspective of the "outsider" or "stranger"—a figure whose role is to ask or provoke questions that might otherwise go unspoken. These are questions that those living within a given historical and social context may not articulate, whether due to historical traumas or societal and state-imposed conventions. In the exhibition, artists from Georgia and Taiwan take on this role, enabling a multiplicity of viewpoints that help transcend the limitations of individual perspectives. This approach bridges the gap between the insider’s lack of necessary distance from current realities and the outsider’s potential lack of deep local understanding. At the same time, it brings together artists from regions that rarely, if ever, appear in a single exhibition, fostering new dialogues and connections.

The term landscape in the exhibition’s title serves as a metaphor for horizontal connections and interconnectedness. It is understood as a composition of elements that encompass the past, present, and future. By examining the landscape, we can gain insight into why events unfold as they do.

The exhibition’s structure highlights a broad spectrum of performative actions—movement/space, body/voice, word/text, material usage, and audience interaction—analyzing each individually. This approach demonstrates the diverse tools that can be employed to create tangible change within specific sociopolitical and sociocultural contexts.

The exhibition aims to: showcase the practices of socially engaged contemporary artists from six countries; reflect on the historical periods and processes that have led to our current reality; provide a platform for fostering sociocultural connections across different nations; bring together artists who actively challenge the status quo on complex sociopolitical issues and envision proactive strategies to address them; develop a form of representation for ongoing processes and emerging knowledge.

In the search for the "good scenario" that society needs, the curatorial team does not seek to oversimplify complexity or disregard reality. We do not yet fully grasp what art represents in the current moment—but, fortunately, we can engage in dialogue to explore and discover it together.