28 April 2022

Exhibition "Politics in Art" at MOCAK, Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków

The exhibition "Politics in Art" is on at MOCAK, Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków, featuring two works by Paweł Kowalewski! 📌 Europeans Only // 2012 (lightbox, 150 x 200 cm). The work depicts a sign that was part of an exhibition at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg in 2007. The surviving sign comes from Pretoria's apartheid-era railway station and, together with the whole museum, stands as a memento — a record of an era of totalitarian ideology built on racism, and a warning against the danger of its return. Capturing the sign in a photograph was meant to preserve that warning. It comes from the "FORBIDDEN!" series, in which Kowalewski photographed prohibition signs from around the world. "Europeans Only" is the work that inspired the artist and launched a series documenting bans that are often oppressive or absurd.