This Thursday, September 10, a new exhibition will open at the Warsaw Museum branch at 12 Srebrna Street - "Transformations. Landscape of Wola after 1989." The exhibition at the Wola Museum will bring closer the symbols of the district's contemporary development, with the Czarny Kot hotel, the Warsaw Spire office complex and the defunct W-Z cinema at the forefront, and show how its landscape has changed over the past thirty years.
For many years I have been observing the processes that take place in the space of Warsaw, including Wola in particular - as a resident of the district and a social activist, as well as a cultural animator and art historian. I would like this exhibition to allow us to think about what kind of space we want for Wola, what we want the district to look like in 10,20 or 50 years, and what role heritage can play," says Patrycja Jastrzębska, curator of the exhibition.
As the organizers of the exhibition write, Wola concentrates, as if in a lens, the phenomena of changes in the landscape that took place after 1989, not only in Warsaw, but in many Polish cities. The exhibition will observe the course of these changes from the "free Americanism" of the 1990s through the process by which Wola's industry gave way to skyscrapers. The exhibition will also focus on the processes of revitalization, residential construction and new developments.
Warsaw, Wola, 2018.
photo: Marta Baranowska
The program accompanying the exhibition, "Transformations. The Landscape of Wola after 1989" is an extension of the themes that the exhibition itself focuses on. We will reflect on the future of Wola, and refer to the impact of the post-1989 transformation, both in terms of visual culture, architecture, and social and economic issues. We will discuss the problems of housing at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, we will talk about grassroots initiatives and city-making," announces Konrad Schiller, head of the Wola Museum.
Among the things planned around the exhibition are debates with the participation of social activists, walks around Wola, lectures on the future of the district and the role of heritage in modernization processes, and thematic guided tours of the exhibition. A detailed program of accompanying events can be found here.
