We announce 12 exhibitions from the City Program and exhibitions in urban space.
The premiere of Szymon Rogiński’s project, a unique exhibition about work and leisure of Łódź citizens and Łódź women, Sophie Thun at the Museum of Art and an unusual exhibition -G.R.O.T.E.S.K: the common language of Eastern Europe with works by Natala LL and Zbigniew Libera, among others. We announce 12 exhibitions from the City Program and exhibitions in urban space.
We invite you to twelve exhibitions co-organized with city and university galleries and partner institutions from all over Poland. In addition, to the several exhibitions in urban spaces and unusual locations. All of them comprising an overview of the latest projects by contemporary Polish artists and student artists.
The first one opens at the The tenement of Hilary Majewski today!
Szymon Rogiński and Andrzej Strumiłło, I don’t dream. I don’t feel lonely. I haven’t any hope. And I’m not afraid of death.
- with an essay by Prof. Monika Kostera
- at the Gallery of the Lodz Photographic Society
On Spirituality in Art by Vasily Kandinsky, is a famous manifesto from the beginning of the last century, in which the artist opposes the materialism of the age of mechanical reproduction. Szymon Roginski, more than a century later, directly asks the question of artificial intelligence whether it has a soul. The project was created upon Fotofestiwal’s invitation.
More information HERE
Anatol Krakowiecki, Karolina Jonderko, Tim Smith, Czesław Jan Siegieda, Michał Iwanowski, Here and There
- at the Art Propaganda Centre
Here and There is an exhibition about the road and home. About the Polish migration to Great Britain – told through photographs and memories of characters from different generations.
From photographs from the Anders Army, which traveled hundreds of thousands of kilometers, to the contemporary experiences of Poles living in Britain. Also on display for the first time will be the photographs of Czesław Jan Siegieda, a documentary filmmaker who, from childhood, photographed the life of the Polish community in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. As Martin Parr said, “it is rare to find a project of such empathy and accuracy.”
More information HERE
Anita Andrzejewska, Dancing Your Dream Awake
- in Bałucka Gallery
Dancing Your Dream Awake is the result of 20 years of creative work by Anita Andrzejewska. Traveling through Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, the photographer learned about indigenous traditions, different religions and customs and searched for what is universal and common to all people. Do we – no matter where we are – search, wander and dream in similar ways?
More information HERE
Dorothy and Louis Bohm, Six Things That Make For Human Happiness
- at the tenement of Hilary Majewski – opening today 15.05!
The first exhibition in Poland of the works of one of the most outstanding photographers of the 20th century, Dorothy Bohm, and the story of the life of the Łódź -born family of Louis Bohm, entrepreneur and husband of the artist. Dorothy Bohm was not only one of the first women to use photography as an art medium, but also, as co-founder of The Photographers’ Gallery in London, she played a fundamental role in the development of important institutions for the medium. Bohm’s color and black-and-white photographs belong to the humanist trend represented by Henri Cartier-Bresson or Andre Kertesz.
More information HERE
Ewa Partum, Change
- at the Municipal Art Gallery Re:Medium
Ewa Partum, the pioneer of Polish feminist art and one of the most important avant-garde artists in Poland. She used her own body to protest against social inequalities as early as the 1970s. How are these works received today, when protest, rebellion and the fight for one’s own body and its representation have become the everyday language life for a few generations?
More information HERE
There’s More To Life Than Work
- at the Museum of the City of Łódź
The first axis of the exhibition is marked by photos related to work in Łódź – not only in the textile factories associated with the city, but also in kitchens, pharmacies, sewers, hospitals, offices and construction sites. The second axis consists of private photos – neither as banal nor as innocent as they might seem at first glance.
Więcej informacji HERE
Sophie Thun, Secret Performance
- at the Museum of Art of Łódź. MS1
Sophie Thun’s exhibition titled “Secret Performance” will be the first institutional presentation of the artist’s work on this scale in Poland. The photos were taken in institutions after hours, when they remained empty and available only to the artist. Thun exposes, cuts, and arranges the photographs from scratch to re-expose their subsequent juxtapositions. As part of the “Secret Performance” exhibition, she also ventures to rediscover works from the museum’s collection. In addition to capturing the intersections between Thun’s work and the legacy of avant-garde and conceptual photography, the exhibition will attempt to frame the medium in a broader, contextual way.
More information HERE
University of Lodz, group exhibition: Community’s Histories + Works of Photosophy: Sampler
- at the Biedermann’s palace
COMMUNITY’S HISTORIES
The University of Lodz is about people, their stories and memories. The university is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year, and to mark the occasion it created a unique project: it collected photos related to its history – both from institutional and private archives, and then asked a group of artists_women to work creatively with the collections.
This is how the project-exhibition-installation-community-in-history was created. Group exhibition: Basia Budniak, Anka Leśniak, Karolina Wojtas, Filip Appel, Jerzy Grzegorski
WORKS OF PHOTOSOPHY: SAMPLER
Film School students revived the archival material of one of Łódź’s most revered photographers, Andrzej Różycki. The invited students acted in the manner of the artist himself, who in his series “FotoAndrzejoZofia” entered into a personal and artistic dialogue with photographer and friend Zofia Rydet, creating collages from his and her photographs. This gesture – of reviving the memory of the deceased – was repeated by contemporary women artists.
This is a group exhibition from the students: Kacper Bijoś (PL), Weronika Coghen (PL), Natalia Dukin (PL), Rui Gu (CHRL), Adam Rudolf Karpiński (PL), Olimpia Kopiec (PL), Julia Lejawa (PL), Weronika Mugaj (PL), Jan Suchorab (PL), Kacper Trzeci (PL), Michał Wąsik (PL)
More information HERE
Konrad Kuzyszyn, In the Spectrum of Melancholy
- at the tenement of Hilary Majewski
“I always rely on self-referential and confessional motifs, like a fragrant narcissus, though after many failures I’m not too fond of myself. I use strong images—because the weak ones don’t give me strength. And all this in Łódź, which runs through my bloodstream. It’ll be summer, people barely dressed, and I’ll still be drawn to the shade…”
More information HERE
Kasia Serkowska, That Sounds Great
- in Ogrodowa8 Gallery
Katarzyna Serkowska is the laureate of the Rector’s Award of the Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts Łódź in the Art Universities Review 2023. The audience has selected her project for individual presentation as part of this year’s festival. “That sounds great” is a story of remembrance, memories, and the experience of loss.
Dominika Sadowska and Wojciech Leder, Anamnesis
- in Galeria Wschodnia
Form can be a tool for knowing the incomprehensible. The Greek anamnesis was about finding an explanation in the process of recalling experienced or imagined images. A photograph may not represent visibility – it can be a copy, a model, a double or a fiction. At its core, it relies on resemblance. Representation, where depth of field is the essential rigor that binds the illusions of spatiality, can either arise from reality or move toward it in search of an explanation.
More information HERE
Post-workshop exhibition of the youth Urban Activity Factory
G.R.O.T.E.S.K – The common language of Eastern Europe group exhibition
- at the tourist point on the Old Market Square
Eastern Europe has been a geopolitical buffer zone for centuries, and as a result the people who live here have had to learn to communicate by reading between the lines and laughing at their own impossible situations, which has given rise to an unmistakably unique way of expression, the Eastern European grotesque. Rather than focusing on the differences between the many peoples across the region, and on the East–West divide that has been left forgotten behind from the Cold War and is becoming less and less relevant with globalization, the G.R.O.T.E.S.K photo project is drawing attention to what connects us, our common values, by showing the best absurd photographs from Eastern Europe, through this publication and exhibitions in Czechia, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary in 2025!
Photographers: HUNGARY: Csilla Klenyánszki, Hórusz Archive (Sándor Kardos) Éva Szombat, László Török, Zsuzsi Ujj; CZECHIA: Oskar Helcel, Dita Pepe, Iren Stehli; SLOVAKIA: Andrej Balco, Martin Kollár, Zuzana Pustaiová, Viktor Šelesták; POLAND: Zbigniew Libera, Natalia LL, Rafał Milach, Agnieszka Sejud; ROMANIA: Mihai Barabancea, Tamás Hajdu; UKRAINE: Alexander Chekmenev, Julie Poly
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Also in the City Program is one of the most unique exhibitions in the history of the festival – the already announced exhibition of American master of photo-publishing Jason Fulford, Lots of Lots in the swimming pool of the YMCA.
And also two exhibitions presented in non-gallery spaces: Niccolò Rastrelli, They Don’t Look Like Me in Schiller Passage – a humorous and colourful story about the cosplay scene in Japan, Italy and Nigeria.
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As always, the City Program, can become your guide to Lodz and the trail of the city’s unique gallery spaces. Here we go – starting today with the first vernissage at the tenement of Hilary Majewski.
Keep an eye on Fotofestiwal’s social media, where we will be publishing more information about the upcoming projects!
