Artists:<\/strong> Noor Abed, Architects for Gaza, Moumita Basak, Edgar B\u0105k, Alicja Bielawska, Egl\u0117 Budvytyt\u0117, Rana Hamadeh, Ana Laura Lozza & B\u00e1rbara Hang, Inside Job (Ula Luci\u0144ska, Micha\u0142 Knychaus), Martyna Jastrz\u0119bska, Agnieszka Kalinowska, Yulia Krivich, Zoarinivo Razakaratrimo \/ Madame Zo, Ala Savashevich, Iza Tarasewicz, Julita W\u00f3jcik, Hannah Alexandra Younger<\/p>\n\n\n\n Curators:<\/strong> Ma\u0142gorzata Ludwisiak, Katarzyna S\u0142oboda<\/p>\n\n\n\n In collaboration with the Central Museum of Textiles:<\/strong> Maria Grzeszczak, Aleksandra Kmiecik<\/p>\n\n\n\n Producer:<\/strong> Sonia Nie\u015bpia\u0142owska<\/p>\n\n\n\n Exhibition installation coordination:<\/strong> Aleksandra Kmiecik<\/p>\n\n\n\n Exhibition spatial design and visual identity:<\/strong> Dziewczyny od Wystaw (Joanna G\u00f3ra-Raurowicz, Katarzyna Similak)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Opening:<\/strong> 18 September 2026, 6 pm<\/p>\n\n\n\n Exhibition dates:<\/strong> 18 September 2026 \u2013 4 April 2027<\/p>\n\n\n\n The exhibition is part of the \u0141\u00f3d\u017a of Many Cultures Festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the Edge of Chaos<\/em> is an exhibition about imagination in times of multidimensional crisis. Its point of departure is the question of the possibility \u2014 and necessity \u2014 of thinking about solidarity, community and mutual responsibility in a world marked by war, violence, forced migration and an escalating climate catastrophe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The title At the Edge of Chaos<\/em>, borrowed from complexity theory, refers to a state in which a system has lost its stability but has not yet crossed the threshold of collapse. It is a zone of dynamic equilibrium: a moment when existing structures cease to be sufficient, while new ones have not yet taken on a lasting form. In such a state, adaptation becomes possible, above all, through decentralisation, cooperation and the ability to forge new connections. Transposed into the social realm, this metaphor allows us to ask what forms of collectivity might emerge in response to contemporary crises, and whether instability might become not only an experience of loss, but also a space of transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the one hand, At the Edge of Chaos<\/em> seeks to capture the moment of balancing on the brink of the global system\u2019s collapse \u2014 a collapse that, in some parts of the world, has already resulted in the chaos of war and humanitarian crises. \u201cAdapting to the edge\u201d has become an everyday experience for many, and, to a greater or lesser extent, is becoming our own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, alongside its diagnosis of the present, the exhibition reaches towards the future \u2014 including a future that is very near, and one that evokes anxiety and fear of the unknown. What kinds of communities do we need in order to survive? What new relationships with the world might we learn, or what other systems and circuits of knowledge might we open ourselves to? What new stories do we need?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Researchers, such as Rupert Read, foreseeing the imminent arrival of the “Chaozocene” \u2014 an epoch defined fully by unpredictable and violent climatic events and wars over resources \u2014 emphasise the need to move beyond the individualism of Western culture and return to the idea and practice of collectivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The exhibition interweaves facts and fictions in order to create its own narrative \u2014 or rather, a constellation of possible narratives. It is close to the thinking of Octavia E. Butler, for whom imagination was a space in which to rehearse catastrophic yet simultaneously communal \u201chistofuturist\u201d scenarios of the future, as well as Ursula K. Le Guin, who understood narrative as a means of building relationships and forms of interdependence beyond normativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The eighteen works brought together in the exhibition \u2014 by invited artists and artistic collectives, as well as from the collection of the Central Museum of Textiles \u2014 form a network of premonitions, poetic narratives, traces, ruptures and attempts to re-establish relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The exhibition opens with Rana Hamadeh\u2019s Standard_Deviation I<\/em> (2021). Drawing on Oedipus Rex<\/em>, the artist explores the possibilities of updating Sophocles\u2019 tragedy. The structure of the work, together with its spectacular and unsettling visual and sonic dimension, allows us to experience the mythical plague of Thebes as a timeless state of collapse \u2014 both of the external world and of the subject\u2019s inner realm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the photographic series Presentiment<\/em> (2014), Yulia Krivich captures a state of tension preceding dramatic change. Her experience of emigration from Ukraine and the atmosphere preceding the war and the annexation of Crimea are translated into images suspended between documentary and staged photography. The everyday begins to bear the signs of an approaching threat, before that threat can yet be clearly named \u2014 a condition that acquires a striking new relevance today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is difficult to deny the striking contemporaneity of Agnieszka Kalinowska\u2019s Heavy Water<\/em> (2016), created a decade ago. The artist places migration within the much longer history of human movement, thereby also giving it a universal dimension. Clay vessels, evoking ancient pottery from Persia, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, cover the silhouettes of fleeing figures. The vessel \u2014 an archaeological trace of human life \u2014 becomes a carrier of the contemporary experience of displacement, while water acquires a metaphorical weight: physical and existential, bound to survival, dignity and the necessity of crossing borders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ala Savashevich\u2019s monumental Unknown<\/em> (2021) invokes the fate of monuments removed from public space as dominant narratives change. The disembodied head becomes a figure of collective amnesia, repression and the difficulty of confronting an unwanted past. It is also a monument to a moment of suspension between a system that has passed and one yet to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A similar state is evoked by Martyna Jastrz\u0119bska\u2019s sculpture Unpresence<\/em> (2023), which depicts a female body in a dramatic gesture of entanglement with fragments of other bodies and matter. The object appears simultaneously as relic and spectre: something buried in the past that returns, reclaiming its presence in the present; collapse and emergence into life taking place at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Edgar B\u0105k\u2019s geometric textile Chaos<\/em> (2024) and Alicja Bielawska\u2019s When Things Find Their Place (Green Blanket)<\/em> (2013) likewise refer to this moment. In the exhibition, they function as symbols \u2014 or graphic signs \u2014 of systemic error, displacement and impending change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The photographs by choreographers Ana Laura Lozza & B\u00e1rbara Hang document the performance space of Consumation<\/em>, which the artists realise in different locations and art institutions around the world. The performance will also take place at the museum on 29 November 2026, with the participation of those who wish to join. Circles of empty chairs seem to await a community that is about to arrive, or to bear traces of its recent presence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Noor Abed\u2019s film our songs were ready for all wars to come<\/em> (2021), collectivity operates through memory, song, movement, folklore and shared ritual. Stories connected to Palestinian wells, mourning and death are activated as a living, embodied form of knowledge \u2014 one capable of resisting dominant narratives and reclaiming a connection with history and the land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The video The Power of the Invisibles<\/em> by Architects for Gaza (Yara Sharif, Nasser Golzari) tells the story of resilient, destruction-resistant practices developed by Palestinians in response to the devastation of their homes and cities. The film draws inspiration from the innovative ways in which the inhabitants of Gaza reuse rubble. Fragments salvaged from destroyed buildings are transformed into a new architectural skin that retains traces of wounds while affirming the right of Gaza\u2019s inhabitants to have a home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These fragmentary interventions allow us to imagine another possible reality \u2014 a world of impermanence, resilience and shared care emerging from the urgent need to act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moumita Basak\u2019s Untitled<\/em> (2021\/2022) invokes female solidarity. The artist draws on kantha embroidery, a practice passed down between women in eastern India, using scraps of fabric and hand stitching to construct a multilayered narrative of memory, nature and women\u2019s experience. Tradition here is not a static inheritance, but a way of sustaining relationships across generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Basak\u2019s work enters into dialogue with two other works. On the one hand, with Eliza Proszczuk\u2019s Sisterhood<\/em>, a textile inspired by the local weaving tradition of Podlasie, the artist\u2019s home region. On the other hand, with Solidarity<\/em> (2017) by Hannah Alexandra Younger, who places the words: \u201cCommunity is made through the collaboration of those invested in each other\u2019s fight.\u201d on the textile. With its loose, hanging threads, the work resembles a banner that requires collective labour to be completed \u2014 or perhaps one that has been torn apart in the course of a struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other systems of knowledge, value and relationship-making are present in the multifaceted installation An Element of Tradition in the 21st Century<\/em> (2003) by Malagasy artist Zoarinivo Razakaratrimo \/ Madame Zo. She draws upon the centuries-old weaving tradition of the Merina people, the largest ethnic group in Madagascar, in whose culture textiles play an important role in social and ethnic identity, as well as ritual and religious life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By creating an installation that employs the language of contemporary art, the artist does not treat cultural heritage as a closed repertoire of forms, but as a living material subject to continual transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other works, the scale shifts from human communities towards the interdependence of bodies, matter and environment. Iza Tarasewicz\u2019s The Means, The Milieu<\/em> (2014\/2021) is an organic structure undergoing constant reconfiguration. Through the presence of living shiitake mushrooms, it becomes a changing environment of growth and transformation, pointing towards new models of coexistence based on interdependence, communication and cooperation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Warmblooded and Earthbound<\/em> (2024), Egl\u0117 Budvytyt\u0117 makes the relationship between body and earth even more direct. Choreographed bodies move through Lithuanian landscapes, along riverbanks and through limestone and clay quarries, dissolving the hierarchies between human beings and landscape, the sacred and the everyday, life and death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The hybrid ecosystem of Paradise Rot<\/em> (2024) by the duo Inside Job (Ula Luci\u0144ska, Micha\u0142 Knychaus) further complicates the boundary between the organic and the technological. Metallic plant-like forms, cocoons, cables and pools create a landscape of simultaneous growth and decay. Yet the titular rot does not signify an end: it becomes a process of transformation from which unexpected relationships and modes of coexistence may emerge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The exhibition pauses at this uncertain moment, between the disintegration of established orders and the emergence of new ones. Within the cracks that open up, questions arise about the possibilities of building relationships under conditions of instability, and about communities capable of embracing different histories, experiences, bodies and more-than-human worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here, the \u201cedge of chaos\u201d becomes a space in which imagination can open up and different configurations of interdependence can take shape. From this perspective, transformation does not mean a spectacular rupture, but a gradual reconfiguration of relationships and the emergence of forms of life that have not yet acquired a fixed shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The international exhibition At the Edge of Chaos<\/em> was conceived specifically for this year\u2019s edition of the \u0141\u00f3d\u017a of Many Cultures Festival, in collaboration with the Central Museum of Textiles in \u0141\u00f3d\u017a. Once again, the festival places questions of human rights, solidarity and responsibility at its centre, alongside the possibility of living together in a world marked by tension, uncertainty and conflicting experiences. It creates a space for encounters between people, languages, histories and experiences \u2014 particularly those that contribute to shaping \u0141\u00f3d\u017a\u2019s identity today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2026, the festival adopts, for the first time, the format of a travelling event, taking place from May through November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The exhibition develops these questions through the language of contemporary art, directing attention towards contemporary geographies of violence and solidarity, experiences of war and migration, but also towards relationships between people and between human beings and the environment, as well as the search for new languages of care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this context, the exhibition becomes part of a broader festival reflection on culture as a space of encounter \u2014 one in which difference does not have to be erased in order for relationships to be built and other forms of living together to be imagined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ma\u0142gorzata Ludwisiak & Katarzyna S\u0142oboda<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On the Edge of Chaos Artists: Noor Abed, Architects for Gaza, Moumita Basak, Edgar B\u0105k, Alicja Bielawska, Egl\u0117 Budvytyt\u0117, Rana Hamadeh, Ana Laura Lozza & B\u00e1rbara Hang, Inside Job (Ula Luci\u0144ska, Micha\u0142 Knychaus), Martyna Jastrz\u0119bska, Agnieszka Kalinowska, Yulia Krivich, Zoarinivo Razakaratrimo \/ Madame Zo, Ala Savashevich, Iza Tarasewicz, Julita W\u00f3jcik, Hannah Alexandra Younger Curators: Ma\u0142gorzata […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5235","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n