An exhibition and an accompanying programme will take place at the Galeria WY in Łódź and the Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.

In the dominant Western perspective, which asserted its superiority in the Age of Enlightenment, Eastern Europe is depicted as a 'sad forest', a land almost untouched by human hand. It is, as Larry Wolf writes in his classic "Inventing Eastern Europe" (1994), a territory with an ever-changing surface
that sometimes ends at the Bug River, sometimes at the Volga, sometimes at the Urals. This precariousness of the geographical scope makes it vulnerable, exposed to attempts at top-down definition in the form of colonisation, occupation and/or extraction. Those on whom an Eastern European identity is imposed become inhabitants of buffer zones, someone and something in between, their existence based on precarity. Yet its very character contains the possibility of transgression, it is characterised by constant change, it consists of resistance to authoritarian, homogenising violence that is incapable of accepting difference. Anti-imperial and progressive Eastern Europanness uses the tried and tested tools of feminism, queer and counter-hegemonic discourses.

"Borderlands" exhibition presents three artistic positions that engage with the image and experience of the forest in its complex, symbolic and material form. Filmmaker, visual artist and activist Kania Hertz from Podlasie documents the Bialowieza Forest, where she lives and works, in her video images. In the film ‘Landscape of Fear’ she records the stories of the people living in the region.

Sculptor and activist Anna Siekierska will present an artefact relating to the history of the auroch cow (Turzyca), an extinct species of mammal belonging to the bovine family and the ancestor of today’s cows.

The forest in Zofia nierodzinska’s large-format paintings is a witness to the history of violence, a reminder of what happened in the 20th century and what is happening now on the Polish-Belarusian border.

Book launch in kosmotique in Dresden; ‘Jewish Realities after October 7’ edited by Annika Wienert and Alexandra Klei with my contribution "Complaining for a Better Future" on antisemitism in Polish art institutions and its historical continuation.

Buchvorstellung und Gespräch mit den Herausgeberinnen Alexandra Klei und Annika Wienert sowie den beiden Künstlerinnen Zofia nierodzińska und Li Shir

Das Buch „Jüdische Realitäten nach dem 7. Oktober“ versammelt Arbeiten jüdischer und antisemitismuskritischer Künstlerinnen und Autorinnen aus Israel, Deutschland, der Schweiz, den USA, Polen, Australien und Großbritannien. Darunter finden sich Theatertexte und Malerei, Fotografie und Skulptur sowie autobiografische Texte.

In einer Zeit, in der in der Wissenschaft, der Kunstwelt, der Kultur und im öffentlichen Diskurs jüdische Stimmen angegriffen, zum Schweigen gebracht und ausgeschlossen werden, wollten die Herausgeberinnen Alexandra Klei und Annika Wienert ihnen einen Raum geben. So entstand das fünfte Jahrbuch des Kunstvereins werkraum bild und sinn.

8 November 2025 (Saturday) from 6 p.m
as part of the exhibition "KRES" at Galeria WY in Łódź

Reading performance: Jens Soneryd

Discussion ‘Naming the Forest: Forest as a Witness’: Susanne Prinz, Linda Soneryd, Jens Soneryd, Natalia Romik (remotely); moderation: Zofia nierodzińska

The event ‘Naming the Forest: Forest as a Witness’ accompanies the exhibition ‘KRES’ and is the result of cooperation between Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Berlin and Galeria WY in Łódź.
The evening will begin with a voice-based performance by Jens Soneryd, an artist and writer living between Bernshammar in Sweden and Berlin. In his practice he explores dichotomies like giving-keeping, speech-writing, flux-permanence, and intimacy-distance. While performing he will recall names of existing, imaginary and lost forests and reflect upon how the lack of names of many of these areas affect our relations to them. Can something or someone who has no name ever become a subject or be remembered when gone?

The performance will be followed by a discussion with Susanne Prinz, Linda Soneryd, Jens Soneryd and Natalia Romik (remotely), moderated by Zofia nierodzińska. The discussion will be held in English.
Forests are not only ecosystems but living archives of memory. They hold pasts in soil and stone, futures in buds and shoots, and the present in their fragile symbiosis. When forests vanish, so do the memories and identities rooted in them – until even language begins to fade.

Susanne Prinz will introduce SAMLA SKOG / GATHERING FOREST – a cross-disciplinary project that collects forest names, memories, and witness testimonies, focusing on loss and creating new forms of forest memorials. Inspired by the notion of lieux de mémoire (sites of memory) and Aleida Assmann’s work on cultural memory, the project explores forests as places where time, memory, and ecology converge. The project, still in its early stages, will be introduced through its inaugural events in Bernshammar and Berlin. The presentation will be inviting dialogue and shared perspectives on forests as spaces that spark ideas and fulfill various needs.

Linda Soneryd introduces her work on collecting witness statements on changed forests. Collecting statements on observed changes over time is part of memory work and creating oral history of forests. The witness statements form a narrative about the implications of an exploitative forestry policy and practice from the perspective of local people's lived experience. Soneryd will read excerpts from one of the witness statements and open up for a dialogue on the role of the witness in times of rapid change and lost life conditions in more-than-human-worlds.

Natalia Romik will share her artistic and research project, 'Hideouts: Architecture of Survival, which was presented at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw in 2022 and at the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt am Main in 2024. During World War II, around 50,000 people living in areas that are now Poland and Ukraine, primarily of Jewish origin, survived the German occupation by going into hiding. The research, presented in the form of an exhibition, pays tribute to their ingenuity and creativity in finding ways to survive. Romik is currently developing the project on hiding places in the Białowieża Forest, where migrants and refugees trying to reach the western countries of the European Union via Belarus and Poland seek shelter.