21 October 2026

“East” – A Photography Exhibition at FESTIVAL200 in Sosnowiec

10–31 October 2026 | EMMA – Schoen Palace, Sosnowiec, Poland

Fot. Dominika Muszyńska

In Poland, we tend to distance ourselves from the idea of belonging to the East. Our aspirations lean towards the West, which we have long associated with modernity and progress. Yet the East remains deeply rooted in our collective memory – as a myth of the former Eastern Borderlands, multicultural heritage and romantic melancholy, but also as an experience of loss, forced displacement and historical trauma.

Today, in the face of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, history has once again become a point of reference for reflecting on border security, migration, belonging and identity.

What, then, is the “East”? A geographical direction, a political construct, a space of memory, or perhaps, above all, an experience shared by people whose lives are shaped by major historical forces?

Within the historic, history-laden interiors of the Emma Palace in Sosnowiec, the exhibition brings together works by sixteen photojournalists, documentary photographers and visual artists who explore this concept through multiple perspectives.

For some, the East is primarily the war in Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis it has caused. For others, it is the experience of forced migration, displacement and living “in between”. In other projects, the East emerges as a landscape of memory, marked by inherited trauma, a sense of loss and the fading traces of communities that once inhabited these places.

The works on display do not offer a single narrative of the East, nor do they seek to define it or establish its geographical boundaries. What connects them is a shared focus on the human experience in the face of global forces: war, shifting borders, migration, the disappearance of established orders and the formation of new identities.

Participating Artists

Marek M. Berezowski · Ewelina Białoszewska · Joanna Górniak · Wojciech Klimala · Anna Kłosek · Aleksandra Kossowska · Katerina Kouzmitcheva · Konrad Koźmiński · Tomasz Kudaszewicz · Yehor Lemzyakoff · Dominika Muszyńska · Sebastian Ożóg · Artur Rychlicki · Maciej Stanik · Simona Supino · Julia Szablowska