Archive of Gestures. Artivism for Women’s Rights in Poland

Can art change the world? How can we express resistance and defiance against the existing system without taking to the streets

The exhibition Archive of Gestures: Artivism for Women’s Rights in Poland is an attempt to capture and present the work of artists operating at the intersection of art and activism, engaging with themes that shape the discourse of broadly understood artivism for women’s rights.

The concept of Archive of Gestures stems from the need to commemorate artistic practices that have resonated across Poland, such as the All-Poland Women’s Strike, as well as those that ordinarily remain within the realm of women’s invisible labour. Our point of departure is the belief that every gesture, no matter how small, can initiate real change, and that socially engaged art does not have to rely on the patriarchal and militant language of battle. Instead, it can take the form of collective practices, radical care, or quiet activism. Consequently, the archive embraces a DIY (do-it-yourself) ethos: it is dispersed and not always immediately visible. Alongside large-scale paintings, site-specific installations, and documentation of spontaneous protests and performances, it is also composed of small gestures: hurried notes scribbled in the margins, hand-embroidered napkins, and intimate photographs that blur the outdated distinction between so-called high and low art.

The exhibition is structured around the tensions and dualities present within artivist practice. It explores the space between strategies of resistance and practices of deep empathy; between the strength of the collective, which challenges the myth of the solitary genius, and the loneliness of invisible labour; between history (herstory!) and the future. An important element of the exhibition is the juxtaposition of ephemeral actions – spontaneous forms of social mobilisation – with long-term, carefully developed projects. It also considers different sites of encounter: public space, the domestic sphere, and the Internet.

The artists invited to participate in the exhibition are based across Poland. Together, they demonstrate that contemporary art engaged in advocating for women’s rights knows no borders, rigid barriers, or fixed definitions. Among them are two artists originating from Ukraine and Belarus, countries marked by war and social unrest. Although their works are deeply rooted in the local symbolism and realities of their respective countries, they take on a universal dimension and introduce an important perspective into Polish contemporary art – those of artists with  experience of migration.

This exhibition is not an attempt to map the entirety of artivism for women’s rights in Poland. Rather, it offers a subjective selection of some of its most significant developments, organised around three interpretative fields: the multidimensionality of women’s experience, corporeality and embodiment, and the dialogue between history and the future. These categories are intentionally fluid and provisional. Each of the featured artists could just as easily appear in a different room. The themes running through their practices intertwine, forming a network of shared experiences, references, mutual inspiration, and records.

We invite you to discover these connections.

MuHER Team

The visual language of the exhibition draws on the DIY ethos, which is strongly present within the Gmach building – a space developed by KAFE (the Collective of Experimental Artistic Forms). Its grassroots practices and activities at the intersection of art and activism embody the essence of artivism. We hope that this mode of display demonstrates that art and social change do not require luxurious institutions, but rather determination, collective action, and a shared purpose. This exhibition is not merely a collection of objects, but an opportunity for direct engagement with art.

Translation by Anna Rabbit

Exhibition sections:

I

We Want the Whole of Life

Zofia Nałkowska

An important aspect of artivism for women’s rights is the recognition of the multidimensionality of women’s experience. Women-artists are no longer expected to reject their own identities in favour of imitating male models of artistic expression once regarded as universal. This shift manifests itself in the diversity of subjects they address, often turning towards themes that have long been considered taboo or confined to the private sphere. By refusing to censor the female perspective and introducing the full spectrum of women’s positions into artistic discourse, artists redefine the notion of universality and reclaim a genuine influence not only over the shape of the artistic canon, but also over the world that surrounds them.

One of the central concerns becomes the visibility of individuals and communities pushed beyond the boundaries of social attention, including women with experience of institutional confinement and those engaged in caregiving. Equally important is the restoration of their agency. Artists draw attention to the invisible labour performed by women, both emotional and physical, which rarely finds its way into monuments or official narratives despite forming one of the foundations upon which societies function.

Many of the works presented here enter into dialogue with the histories of Poland, Kraków, and art itself. Artists revisit iconic figures and, through acts of reinterpretation and deconstruction, strip them of their hagiographic aura. In doing so, they reveal dimensions that are profoundly human, corporeal, and female, placing historical and popular-cultural narratives within contemporary social realities..

Working across a wide range of media, including craftivism, artists invest in traditional practices such as embroidery and weaving with political and social significance. Everyday experiences and subjects that have long been marginalized are elevated to the status of fully-fledged critical statements, demonstrating the transformative potential of practices often dismissed as domestic or decorative.

1. Martyna Borowiecka, Jadwiga’s Footprint, 2025, oil on canvas

The painting draws on a Kraków legend about the footprint of Queen Jadwiga impressed into the wall of the Carmelite Church. To leave her mark on a stone placed so high above the ground, the protagonist of the work would have had to assume an acrobatic pose, requiring both flexibility – and strength. The painting contains references to the Queen’s historical achievements (scattered handbags bearing the logo of the Jagiellonian University allude to her role in restoring the institution, to which she bequeathed her fortune).

Rather than focusing on Jadwiga’s historical legacy, the artist chooses to present her as a woman. A casket associated with the Queen, decorated with scenes from chivalric romances and now held in the treasury of Wawel Cathedral, reappears in the painting as a pink handbag.  The work also comments on the sense of vulnerability many women experience in public space. A predatory shadow and a fallen column generate a sense of tension within the composition – the latter symbolising the construct of man as the pillar of the family, a statesman, the bedrock of the nation, revealed here as a fragile illusion.

2. Iza Moczarna-Pasiek, Red Tent – The Story, 2025, installation

Red Tent – The Story is a fragment of the installation that concluded the participatory art project Red Tent – Exercises in Bleeding. The Story of the Red Tent Community. As part of the project, Iza Moczarna-Pasiek led a series of workshops attended by approximately 300 participants. Drawing on their own diverse experiences of menstruation, participants created visual representations of these stories in the form of drawings, paintings, prints, embroidery, photographs, and sculptures. Together, these works formed a collective craftivist installation. The project also resulted in a publication – a collection of stories about menstruation.

In traditional cultures, the red tent was a space where women experienced menstruation together, seeking solutions to challenges affecting both themselves and their wider communities. Drawing on this idea, the installation presents menstruation as a source of collective strength. It seeks to dismantle taboos, break the silence surrounding the subject, and promote acceptance of one’s own cyclical nature. The red tent becomes a place of gathering and exchange, of sisterhood, community-building, and imagining alternative futures.

3. Ala Savashevich, Miss Best Worker, 2023, chainmail, steel

The installation Miss Best Worker by Ala Savashevich, a Belarusian-born artist living and working in Wrocław, brings together two archetypes of the “ideal” woman: the beauty queen and the model collective farm worker. To achieve this, Savashevich draws on the multiple meanings of the ceremonial sash – an adornment worn by beauty pageant winners, recipients of state honours, school pupils during official ceremonies, and collective farm workers during harvest celebrations.

The weight of the steel chainmail emphasises the burden placed on women who are expected to perform multiple roles, often impossible to reconcile with one another. An additional aspect of the work, invisible to the naked eye, is the labour invested in its creation: countless hours spent linking together several kilograms of iron rings. The symbolic act of awarding herself the title of Miss Best Worker becomes a form of compensation for effort that so often remains unseen and unacknowledged by others.

4. Elżbieta Jabłońska, Supermother, 2002, photograph

The photographic series Supermother emerged from Elżbieta Jabłońska’s experience of discovering herself in the new role of a mother. Motherhood is depicted without a trace of romanticism: the artist presents life with her five-year-old son in the confined space of a 36-square-metre flat, entanglement in everyday routines, and a commitment to family responsibilities that leaves little room for artistic practice.

The inspiration for the series came from a photograph taken at a fancy-dress party, showing Jabłońska’s son dressed as Zorro. In the works that make up the series, the artist portrays herself in the costumes of male superheroes, figures who appear in moments of crisis and perform feats requiring superhuman strength. She holds her son on her lap in a pose that recalls the iconography of the Madonna and Child.

The heroism of the Polish Mother is not spectacular, yet it demands sacrifice and immense effort. It consists of invisible labour, traditionally associated with women: maintaining order amidst the greyness of everyday life and carrying the weight of responsibilities that so often go unnoticed.

5. Mo Tomaszewska, Stańczyk(A), 2020, photograph, costume

The performance Stańczyk(A) was created in response to the ruling imposed on women – the banning of legal abortion by Julia Przyłębska’s Constitutional Tribunal in October 2020 – and in the context of the protests that followed, which grew into the largest demonstrations in Poland since 1989. The artivist action was inspired by the figure of Stańczyk, the court jester of Kraków, who used humour as a vehicle for criticism of reckless political decisions. His sharp wit spared not even rulers. The choice of this character highlights the local, Kraków-based context of the work, while simultaneously creating a cultural provocation. The protagonist of Jan Matejko’s iconic painting, familiar to every Pole, and of Stanisław Wyspiański’s drama “The Wedding”, is transformed into a woman in a punk-inspired reinterpretation. The female Stańczyk becomes a symbol of women’s strength and sisterhood, and of resistance to the state’s denial of women’s freedom of choice. The letter “A” added to the name Stańczyk(A) creates a feminine form, while also alluding to the anarchist symbol of resistance to all forms of authority.

II

Your Body Is a Battleground

Barbara Kruger

When thinking about women’s rights in Poland, the first image that often comes to mind is that of a political struggle and restrictive legislation seeking to colonise the female body. This reality is documented in powerful images from street protests which, despite pulsing with anger, are equally infused with hope, colour, and creativity. The remarkable costumes worn by protesters, the inventive slogans, and the graphics displayed on handmade cardboard placards testify to the role of art as an integral part of resistance. At the same time, this collective uprising resonates with the uncompromising voice of civil society: critical messages calling for change and offering solidarity, appearing throughout urban space as acts of guerrilla art – ephemeral, politically engaged interventions created beyond official authorisation.

This exhibition, however, moves beyond the language of protest alone. It crosses the threshold of resistance to reclaim a sphere that is equally radical, yet often pushed into the background: the right to pleasure, autonomy, and full visibility. Through the subversive aesthetics of post-porn cinema, artists dismantle traditional patriarchal mechanisms of looking at, judging, and controlling the body. In this context, representations of sexuality cease to function as tools of discipline and instead become practices of reclaiming voice, sensual pleasure, agency, and sisterhood. The exhibition also addresses issues inseparable from the struggle for self-determination, including medical exclusion, the stigmatisation of disability, and the systemic indifference that continues to shape experiences of women’s health.

These difficult narratives intertwine to form one of the exhibition’s central foundations: a powerful polyphony centred on a body that can no longer remain invisible to healthcare systems or to society at large. At the same time, the works presented here gesture towards what has been described as pleasure activism – a transformative approach to social and political change that insists the struggle for a better world need not, and indeed should not, be defined solely by suffering, burnout, and endless sacrifice.

6. Photographing All Woman’s Strike 

7. Plakaciary, 2025, print

Plakaciary have been active in Poland since 2019. They are a self-organised, grassroots feminist movement engaged in poster campaigns in public space. The collective’s activities are aimed at combating rape culture, violence against women, and femicide. Their slogans respond both to individual acts of aggression and to manifestations of systemic oppression, such as the restriction of legal abortion introduced by the Constitutional Tribunal in October 2020. They also express solidarity with other marginalized and discriminated communities.

The group seeks to reclaim public space from the bottom up – a space that often becomes a site of oppressive treatment and exclusion for women. Their posters are characterised by the aesthetic of thick, bold, hand-painted black lettering: a visual scream that stands out in the urban landscape. Posters referring to specific acts of violence are sometimes pasted in the very locations where those events took place.

Plakaciary operates anonymously across numerous cities in Poland.. Their method of action requires neither specialised skills nor expensive materials – only paper, a writing tool, and glue. The accessibility of this practice is central to its political significance: anyone can take part, contribute a voice, and intervene in the spaces they inhabit. Further information about the collective and its activities can be found on their website.

8. mariia lemperk, Kissing a Rock, performance, zine, photographs, video, objects, 2023 – ongoing

Kissing a Rock unfolds through performance, writing, experimental theatre, post-pornographic film, collective somatic and movement practices, and publications. Developed across natural landscapes as well as galleries and theatres, the project treats the stone as a metaphor for the political nature of surfaces (bodies, objects, gestures), and as a site of transformation. Encountering a rock or a stone often signals a moment of change (or a pause for reflection before it). The rock becomes a threshold that provokes transformation, confronts the protagonist with diverging paths, and alters the course of the narrative. lemperk’s gestures are rooted in ecofeminism, which examines the relationship between humans and nature through the lens of gender, linking the discrimination of women with humanity’s domination of the natural world. They also engage with ecosexuality – a practice that combines activism and pleasure, and a form of ecological activism that begins with treating the Earth as a lover.

The newspaper “Kissing a Rock” brings together activist, artistic, and sex worker voices, poetry, post-performative traces, ecosexual reflections, collective memories, essays, love letters, and graphic materials that move across the broad spectrum between stones and kissing. It also serves as an archive of the project’s realisations to date.

9. Alicja Pawluczuk, Endo(f) Violence, 2026, site-specific installation

Endo(f) Violence is a site-specific installation addressing the issue of endo violence – the systemic, medical, and epistemic violence experienced by people living with endometriosis. Alicja Pawluczuk, working under the artistic pseudonym Hystera (from the Greek word for uterus), draws on her own experience of invisible disability, marked by the dismissal of pain and difficulties in obtaining a diagnosis. She approaches endometriosis as a political issue, employing art, theory, and community-building as tools of resistance.

The artist is active on social media, exploring the ways in which digital platforms shape processes of self-perception. By sharing her artworks and research online, she develops them through interactions with other users, making participation and exchange an integral part of her practice. Combining the aesthetics of kitsch with representations of pain, and tragic narratives with pink and glitter, she highlights the experience of living with a condition that can profoundly restrict everyday functioning while navigating social expectations placed on women to remain attractive and maintain control over their emotions.

III

The Past of the Future

Izabela Czartoryska

For centuries, women were cast in the role of archivists of great creators – their husbands or fathers – while their own artistic achievements were pushed to the margins. Responsibility for preserving the memory of these women and their work was rarely assumed by others, as female artists, unlike their male counterparts, could seldom rely on partners committed to safeguarding their legacy. In this context, self-archiving and the recovery of forgotten or erased predecessors become vital dimensions of artivism for women’s rights.

The artists and activists presented in this exhibition undertake a conscious effort to restore the memory of overlooked pioneers, granting herstory a tangible form of agency. This process unfolds across multiple levels: from digital activism and countless hours spent conducting archival research, to the reclamation of urban space itself. The exhibition creates a space for alternative (for now) narratives about identity, labour, and women’s presence in the public sphere. Central to this approach is an examination of the mechanisms of disappearance and an investigation of the places where women have been systematically omitted, overlooked, or erased.

The exhibition also raises questions about language and definition, reflecting on the concept of artivism itself. Although the term was only coined in the late 1990s, the practices it describes have much deeper historical roots. This continuity is embodied in the mural Pioneers of Artivism, which brings into this engaged narrative figures who, despite having no knowledge of today’s terminology, fully embodied its principles through their actions and work.

10. Iwona Demko, works from the Feminatives series, 2021, textile artwork

Iwona Demko, Her Magnificence the Rectoress, 2018 – 2020, costume and performance documentation

Works from the Feminatives series draw attention to the ways in which language shapes both imagination and reality. When girls hear only masculine forms of the names of professions, they cease to imagine themselves performing those roles. Women are also less likely to apply for a position if its title appears exclusively in the masculine form. By avoiding feminine forms for professions considered “more prestigious”, we imply that gaining respect requires abandoning one’s female identity.

The project Her Magnificence the Rectoress emerged in response to the refusal of the authorities of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków to officially commemorate the centenary of the admission of its first female student – Zofia Baltarowicz-Dzielińska. In response, Iwona Demko presented “Alternative Academy News” – an artistic spoof of the institution’s official quarterly magazine. She portrayed herself as Her Magnificence the Rectoress, heading an institution in which the presence of women had become a cornerstone of its identity, and where one hundred years of women’s presence at the Academy were being duly commemorated. Thanks to the artist’s efforts, 2019 was officially declared the Year of Women at the Academy of Fine Arts. A Wikipedia article created to mark the occasion was subsequently removed as “non-encyclopaedic”. The project was further developed through a gesture that brought fiction into reality – Demko’s actual candidacy in the Academy’s rectoral election, for a position that in the institution’s history had never before been held by a woman. This performative act functioned as an exercise in collective imagination, encouraging people to begin seeing a woman in the role of rector.

11. Liliana Zeic, The Sourcebook, 2020, photographs, drawings, object

The point of departure for this series of works was The New Woman’s Survival Sourcebook by Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie, a publication lent to Liliana Zeic by Sława Walczewska. Sława – who also appears in our collage dedicated to the pioneers of artivism – received the book in 1974, at the age of fourteen, in a parcel sent by Radcliffe College in response to a letter expressing her desire to learn about feminism..

In The Sourcebook series, Zeic constructs an archive of queer and lesbian womanhood in Poland. Her work turns towards what has been forgotten or overlooked, ensuring that queer histories existing beyond the mainstream become attached to collective memory. The artist begins with the stories of specific individuals whose homosexuality can only be inferred, often because deliberate efforts were made to erase its traces.

Among those she recalls is Narcyza Żmichowska, founder of the group Entuzjastki (“The Enthusiasts”), within which, according to Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, “exalted, often passionate friendships between women” flourished. She also examines the relationship between Maria Dulębianka and Maria Konopnicka. The works contain numerous references to the latter’s poetic fairy tale On Blueberries! A Woodland Booklet, its community of forest maidens, the Panien Borówczanek, and a seemingly incidental remark within the story concerning the hanging of a hawk.

12. Małgorzata Markiewicz, Arranging Flowers, 2019, photograph collage

In the performances that make up the Arranging Flowers series, Małgorzata Markiewicz “attacks” monuments commemorating men with “flowers” assembled from women’s clothing. In doing so, she draws attention to the women whose presence is absent from public memory and public space, despite their contribution to the lives and achievements of the men honoured by these monuments – mothers, nannies, wives, lovers, and muses. Constructed from garments, these “flowers” are gentle, soft, and ephemeral interventions. The gesture of placing underwear before a monument can be read as provocative. At the same time, from the perspective of the male gaze, it may resemble a kind of trophy or prize, recalling the image of a naked woman.

The first performance in the series took place as part of the Year of Women at the Academy of Fine Arts in 2019. Markiewicz arranged her flowers in front of a copy of Michelangelo’s Lorenzo de’ Medici, located in the Academy’s main building in Kraków. The gesture referred to the experiences of female sculpture students, often considered too weak to create the monumental works most highly valued within the discipline. At the same time, it drew attention to the women of the Academy – the life models posing for nude studies, as well as the artists who had to fight for their right to study, teach, and have their work taken seriously.