Honorary patronage of the WE Exhibition: Minister of Culture and National Heritage
Honorary patronage of the WE Exhibition: Director General of the Prison Service
Graphics: Renata Motyka
Two Exhibitions – Participatory Art in Prisons
ART does not judge: culture only makes sense when it includes everyone.
The project Two Exhibitions, carried out by the Dom Kultury Foundation, consisted of five cycles of educational classes and creative workshops held simultaneously in four Warsaw remand prisons – Grochów, Bemowo (External Unit), Białołęka and Służewiec. The participants were people serving prison sentences – women and men of different ages, coming from various regions of Poland, often experiencing social and cultural exclusion from an early age.
The workshops were participatory in nature – participants were co-authors of the creative process. In the theoretical part, they gained knowledge of art history and selected artistic disciplines; in the practical part, working alongside invited artists, they created their own works and co-developed workshop concepts.
For many, this was the first conscious engagement with culture and their first experience of being creators rather than solely recipients.
Artists and educators long associated with the Foundation took part in the project: Małgorzata Gurowska and Joanna Ruszczyk, Małgorzata Jabłońska and Piotr Szewczyk, Waldemar Petryk and Kwiaciarnia Grafiki (Kwiatuchi).
Renata Motyka prepared the post-project publication.
The artists worked through dialogue and openness, treating their presence inside the prison environment as part of the social responsibility inherent in their artistic practice.
To be heard (WE, the exhibition)
The project concluded with two identical exhibitions:
– the first, intended for incarcerated participants and invited guests, took place at the end of November at the Warsaw-Białołęka Remand Prison,
– the second, open to the public, was presented in December at Galeria Studio (Studio Teatr Galeria).
Both exhibitions presented the same objects created during the workshops as well as photographic documentation.
The project Two Exhibitions created a space for social integration and for changing public narratives about people deprived of liberty. Participants were able to present their own perspectives and appear in the public sphere as authors. One of the outcomes of the project was its contribution to reducing stereotypical perceptions of this group and highlighting their creative potential.
The results of the project, along with the publication prepared by Renata Motyka, were made available online to reach a wide audience, including educators, curators, artists and people interested in inclusive culture and socially engaged art.
The Two Exhibitions project became an example of effective cooperation between different sectors – cultural institutions, a non-governmental organisation and penitentiary units. It introduced tools of culture and creativity into isolated environments and later presented the outcomes in one of the central cultural venues of the city.
Exhibition I
Exhibition II
Photo: Archive Fundacja Dom Kultury
