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A view of the exhibition ‘LGBT+ Zones: Queer Art in the Age of “Good Change”’, photo: Arsenal Gallery, Poznań

From Archives to Drag Partisans: A Concise Guide to Polish Queer Art

photography & visual arts

Piotr Policht

Reading time: 17 min

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The past 20 years have been a period of profound change for Polish queer art. Everything has happened: grassroots initiatives, provocative gestures, the first queer archives, and retrospective exhibitions. Alongside this growing visibility, new tensions have emerged – for example, between radicalism and aestheticisation, or between affirmation and martyrdom.

In 2021, in an interview with Dorota Sajewska published in Dwutygodnik, Karol Radziszewski said:

Enjoying Art, or When Everyone Can Understand What Artists Are Talking About

Do you understand art? Contemporary art has a reputation of being the most inaccessible of all fields of culture. Is it really such a hermetic and esoteric world, or does the problem lie in how to talk about art?

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I get the impression that I’m seeing more and more work that’s been sanitised, yet it still claims to be queer. Queer has recently become very fashionable in Poland. Everything is queer, yet often stripped of its edge, neutered. For most people, ‘LGBT’ and ‘queer’ mean exactly the same thing, and queer art is simply art that’s cool, a bit about community and a bit about dressing up.

A lot has changed since 2005, when Radziszewski, then early in his career, organised the exhibition Pedały (Fags) in a private flat in Warsaw, which was recognised as the first openly gay exhibition in Poland. It was certainly not a ‘neutered’, cool and pleasant piece of art. The exhibition’s title was an appropriation of a derogatory term; in the exhibition, Radziszewski also quoted the homophobic slogan ‘God hates fags’, while at the same time he gave tangible form to the paranoid visions of those who use it by creating a fictional militia, the Fag Fighters, wearing pink balaclavas and harassing straight lads.

So what has happened in Polish art over the past two decades, and is the fact that ‘queerness’ became a permanent part of the institutional lexicon a few years ago a true sign of a deeper change?

The archives of the misfits

Karol Radziszewski, ‘Dik Fagazine’ covers, courtesy of the artist

A dozen or so years after the much-talked-about Ars Erotica exhibition (1994), which, amid the enthusiasm of the transition period, celebrated sensual joy in art, the Ars Homo Erotica exhibition, curated by Paweł Leszkowicz, was held at the same venue, the National Museum in Warsaw. The 2010 exhibition drew primarily on the holdings of the Warsaw museum, supplemented by more recent works and pieces created especially for the occasion.

The venue was prestigious, but the exhibition drew only moderate enthusiasm. It was appreciated as a glimpse of what was possible in an era of – as it might have seemed – neoliberal post-politics and a slow but inexorable march towards social progress, yet even then its very structure seemed rather anachronistic. The exhibition, which focused primarily on male homoeroticism, sought in historical works not so much their queer potential as their homoerotic subtext, a transhistorical homosexual identity, and an equally enduring homoerotic beauty.

Seven years later, right in the heart of Warsaw – on the sixth floor of the Palace of Culture – the exhibition Dziedzictwo (Heritage), organised by Karol Radziszewski, Michał Grzegorzek and Wojciech Szymański as part of the grassroots queer festival Pomada, took place. Their exhibition challenged the grandiose #Dziedzictwo (#Heritage) project on display at the National Museum in Kraków (curated by Andrzej Szczerski, with then-President Andrzej Duda serving as its honorary patron). Recognising the heritage associated with queer identities did not fit within the vision of the organisers of the Kraków exhibition – after all, it would have undermined the narrative that dehumanises LGBTQ people as part of an alien ‘ideology’.

Joyful Metal & Furious Rabbits: New Art from Silesia

Since the 1950s, Upper Silesia has been represented by three groups, each more eccentric than its predecessor. Culture.pl examines the path that Polish painting has taken in this region – with a particular focus on today’s generation.

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Kisieland by Karol Radziszewski - Image Gallery

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The strategy adopted by the curators of Warsaw’s Dziedzictwo was markedly different from Leszkowicz’s previous approach. Admittedly, they did display artefacts such as Iwaszkiewicz’s tie in the museum display cases, but the aim was not to demonstrate a homoerotic orientation in cases where the sources are silent or speak only in whispers, but rather to give meaning to individual items relevant from today’s perspective. As Wojciech Szymański wrote:

It is precisely the meaning we tend to ascribe to things, so as to perceive them as our own heritage, that emerges from a desire, and this desire concerns becoming a subject of history who wishes to make their past – a past hitherto untold by violent, heteronormative historiographies and not deposited in heteronormative archives – to put it aphoristically, less alien.

This strategy of attributing meaning is perfectly illustrated by Przemek Branas’s work. In his early projects, the artist referenced, among others, two neo-avant-garde pioneers of Polish queer art, Krzysztof Jung and Krzysztof Niemczyk. Branas engaged in a complex game of reconstruction and commemoration, particularly with Niemczyk’s oeuvre – a painter, writer and performer who was for a time associated with Tadeusz Kantor’s circle, only to be ruthlessly marginalised by Kantor later on. In Kraków, a city petty-bourgeois to the very core, he challenged social norms through his actions, including bathing naked every Sunday in the fountain in front of St Mary’s Basilica.

Standing in the same spot, Branas drowned out the bugle call ringing out from the tower with a blood-curdling scream. He could not repeat his dip in the same fountain – it is no longer there; it has been replaced by a small glass pyramid, part parody of the one at the Louvre, part harbinger of the concrete-and-LED modernisation aesthetics that later spread across dozens of county towns. In his search for the original, Branas eventually found the old fountain in the building of the Municipal Infrastructure and Transport Authority in Kraków. Under the guise of filming the stone remains, since the fountain had been dismantled, he managed to gain access and even discreetly remove a fragment weighing several dozen kilograms – as if it were a relic. In the end, he ceremoniously donated it to the Archaeological Museum in Kraków, though not for display – it was buried in the museum garden by the artist’s naked partner. A photographic record and an official document remain as evidence of this act.

Venice Welcomes the Polish Avant-Garde: Kantor & Jarema at the 2026 Biennale

If you happen to find yourself in Venice’s famous St Mark’s Square sometime between May and November, you’ll be only a few steps away from an encounter with some of the most prominent artists of the Polish avant-garde.

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Przemek Branas, performance ‘I Wanna Be Your Colonizer’, photo: Bartek Zalewski / courtesy of the artist and the Gdańsk City Gallery

In his later work, Branas queered the images he had found, which were stripped of their context. When, in his hometown of Jarosław in the Podkarpacie region, he came across a collection of a dozen or so photographs of an anonymous sailor taken in Curaçao in the 1930s, he took on the role of this figure, brought him to life, and appropriated him. ‘I use the image of his body, and through my contact with it, that body suddenly becomes gay,’ said the artist as he set off on a ferry to Sweden, wearing an outfit specially made for the occasion, based on the white uniform seen in the photographs. The event was also documented on video and complemented by a sequence of gestures performed at the exhibition at the Gdańsk City Gallery, along with a specially composed scent.

Dziedzictwo(2017) drew primarily on the holdings of the Queer Archives Institute (QAI) – a one-person institution founded by Karol Radziszewski on 15 November 2015, the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Hiacynt campaign. The core of the archive consists of materials belonging to Ryszard Kisiel, a key figure in the Polish LGBTQ+ movement and the creator of the zine Filo, one of the first gay magazines in Central and Eastern Europe. The establishment of QAI was preceded by Radziszewski’s publishing project, DIK Fagazine, which later evolved from an artistic zine into a printed archive of queer life in Central and Eastern Europe before the fall of communism.

Beyond martyrdom

Stone Witnesses: Monuments & the Shifting Politics They Embody

Monuments are more than stone and bronze – they are battlegrounds of memory, identity, and power. From Adam Mickiewicz’s statue in Paris to revolutionary iconoclasm, this piece explores how monuments are created, destroyed, displaced, and resurrected, revealing the shifting politics and cultural debates they embody. Through stories of forgotten unveilings, contested designs, and silent pilgrimages, it examines how these public symbols shape collective memory while enduring – or succumbing to – the tempests of history.

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Mikołaj Sobczak, ‘The Smiths’, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 124.5 × 165 cm, photo: ING Polish Art Foundation

Alongside the creation of archives, official history is being queered. The Dziedzictwo exhibition featured, among other things, paintings by Mikołaj Sobczak, who was making his debut as a painter at the time. The pictures from the Drag Niezłomne (Doomed Drags) series, exhibited at the Polana Institute in 2018, referred directly to the cult of the ‘cursed soldiers’, except that in Sobczak’s works the unbroken female partisans were drag queens, often taking the likenesses of real-life heroines from the local drag scene of the time: Kim Lee, Charlotte and Uel. Masquerade and exaggeration became the most effective tools for challenging the official historical narrative, which creates flawless heroes, always with weapons in their hands.

The period 2015–2023 was summarised in 2025 by the exhibition Strefy LGBT+. Sztuka Queerowa w Czasach Dobrej Zmiany (LGBT+ Zones. Queer Art in the Era of ‘Good Change’) at the Municipal Gallery Arsenał in Poznań, curated by Gabi Skrzypczak and Tomek Pawłowski-Jarmołajew. While it did highlight the shifts in discourse since Ars Homo Erotica and the flourishing of queer art, it was underpinned by a bitter realisation that this flourishing was unfolding in contrast to a political reality whose trajectory was not necessarily geared towards emancipation. Incidentally, the exhibition also exposed the superficiality of the interest that institutions show in queer themes. Although one might hear that queer is now appearing almost everywhere, when it comes down to it, only the municipal gallery in Poznań gives it a place – and even then, only in small rooms, not in the main galleries.

In the context of identifying the Hiacynt campaign as the founding moment of the Polish queer emancipation movement, Aleksander Kmak wrote in Culture:

Sealed with a Kiss: 7 Polish Artworks Featuring Kisses

Blown from across a room, a peck on the cheek, a big old smooch on the mouth! Kisses can be playful and tender, friendly and passionate, delicate and bold. Explore how Polish artists have captured these sweet moments between loved ones and lovers!

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Tired of martyrological, heroic narratives, we need empowering narratives that focus not on queer suffering, but on life; not on humiliation, but on joy and pleasure.

Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, ‘Until a Thousand Roses Bloom’ (with Warsaw in the Background), Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, 1–22 June 2018, photo: Spyros Rennt / Foksal Gallery Foundation archive

In the art world, a counterbalance to martyrdom is created, among others, by the poetic and artistic collective X-Philes. The archive of queer poetry it has been building for several years is accompanied by activities in gallery spaces, such as the exhibition Baśnie z Krwi i Kości (Tales of Blood and Bone) at the Foksal Gallery Foundation (2021), where spatial installations were complemented by texts concealed within the space, placing the body and language at the centre rather than the burden of historical and contemporary oppression.

The body and queer sensuality are also central to Alex Baczyński-Jenkins’ choreographic performances. One example is the spectacular Nim Zakwitnie Tysiąc Róż (z Warszawą w Tle) (Until a Thousand Roses Bloom (with Warsaw in the Background)), which was presented at Foksal Gallery Foundation. It is significant that this queer art – which places the political context in the background rather than at the centre – found a place in one of Poland’s leading commercial galleries, an institution that presents itself as heir to the Foksal tradition, with its long-standing emphasis on the autonomy of the avant-garde.

Shall they see us?

‘Science & Art in the Process of Protecting the Natural Human Environment’: About the Zgorzelec Region Plein-Air

Science in art? The subject of humans’ relationship with the natural environment and the demands for its protection began to appear in the activities of artists in Poland as early as the first half of the 1960s. Although the Zgorzelec region plein-air took place only once, it left an indelible mark on further development of ecologically-involved art.

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From the series ‘Let Them See Us’, Karolina Breguła, 2003, photo courtesy of the artist

In queer narratives set in the here and now, it is the gaze that takes centre stage. Karolina Breguła’s historically significant photographic series, Niech Nas Zobaczą (Let Them See Us) (2003) – which appeared on billboards as part of Poland’s first campaign against homophobia – refers to the gaze in its very title. However, the cautious optimism of the new millennium, as expressed in street photographs of non-heteronormative couples, was subject to significant limitations. It is no coincidence that Breguła’s photographs are the flip side of Radziszewski’s Fag Fighters imagery – painfully ordinary pictures of couples holding hands, intended to persuade the viewer that they pose no threat and conform to social norms. They are, in fact, very close to the mythical ‘gay friend who doesn’t make a fuss’, the sort of figure that right-wing politicians like to hide behind.

Liliana Zeic’s work You’re Going to Love the Lavender Menace (2018) serves as a kind of counterpoint to Breguła’s series. In this series of photographs, the artist appears in an urban setting, embracing her partner – except that both are wearing camouflage outfits made by Zeic from plants, modelled on sniper uniforms.

Liliana Zeic, ‘In the First Year They Sleep, in the Second Year They Creep, in the Third Year They Explode’, curated by Piotr Lisowski, photo: Małgorzata Kujda / 66P

Abandoning camouflage – whether literal or, as in Breguła’s case, metaphorical – is bound to attract attention sooner or later. As the queer artist Przemysław Piniak noted in one of his works at the Poznań exhibition Oczy ze Środka Głowy(Eyes from the Centre of the Head) (2023):

All the Shades of Night: Nocturnes in Polish Painting

Atmospheric landscapes permeated with melancholy are everyone’s first association with nocturne painting. That’s only the beginning, however: depictions of frolics and folk rituals, encounters with extraordinary figures, and even commonplace objects given an eerie twist by evening light show how, for centuries, nighttime has remained a vital source of inspiration for painters who continue to capture its many facets on canvas.

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When they’re staring at you, and you know you’re wearing something they think is ridiculous by Polish straight standards – a little hat. A couple like that were staring at me on the tram, so I stared right back at them for five minutes straight. I noticed one of them asking the other if I’d been staring the whole time. They didn’t know what to do. I managed to shame them. But that was literally a one-off. So far, it’s only happened once in my life that I’ve managed to pull myself together like that and get the better of someone. So it really is a duel in which they – their stares – win with impunity.

For years, the one who has consistently sought to find his place between two extremes – blending into the heteromatrix and ostentatiously defying it – is Daniel Rycharski. Rycharski’s work, in which rural life, non-heteronormativity and religiosity intersect, is most effective when presented outside the gallery context: when the wild boar scarecrows – crosses dressed in the clothing of marginalised queer people from rural areas – actually stand in a field, having as much of an effect on wild boars as they do on people. The Strachy (Scarecrows) is a martyrological work, but Rycharski balances such pieces with works that draw out the emancipatory potential of religious themes. One such work is a gate depicting the Virgin Mary as the patron saint of queer people, which refers to an apocryphal tale but ultimately gets to the heart of the Christian narrative about the protector of all the oppressed.

Daniel Rycharski, ‘Scarecrows’, Kurówko, 2018, photo: Daniel Chrobak

The logic of concealing or coming out allows us to move beyond viewing identity as a construct in constant flux. As Filipka Rutkowska declared in 2026: Gender is Over. In her solo exhibition of the same title at Galeria Studio (running until 5 July 2026), the performer begins with an anatomy of the drag wardrobe. She starts with shoes and deconstructed clothes, blends high fashion with campy kitsch, and ends not only on stage, where her performances take place, but also in a chaotic, non-linear archive of drawings, texts and images, with an identity that fragments into many incarnations.

The duo Eternal Engine (Martix Navrot and Jagoda Wójtowicz) deconstructs binary oppositions using digital tools. In their project Body Open Source, which began in 2018, the body has no single, fixed form – it emerges from interactions among all users.

Theatre From Trash: Scenographic Recycling

'Theatre from Trash' explores how Polish theatres transform discarded objects into scenographic gold – blending ecological awareness, community involvement, and artistic innovation. From porcelain and socks to milk cartons and dried-up Christmas trees, this creative reuse not only challenges waste but invites audiences to become co-authors of performances, forging emotional, cultural, and ethical bonds through material storytelling.

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[‘Gender Is Over’ – Filipka Rutkowska Exhibition [Image Gallery]

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It is precisely what lies beyond individual identity that has become the central theme of queer art today, because no lasting change can be achieved through individual effort alone. As Mikołaj Sobczak, whom I mentioned earlier, said on the occasion of his recent exhibition Misteria (Mysteries) at the Polana

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