The authors of paintings, photographs, films, objects and installations explore the potential of the human body in a way that is varied and often uncompromising. Thus, they extend the scope for interpretation beyond purely aesthetic categories and address issues that, though difficult and inconvenient, are socially important.

As the year 2023 is the 100th anniversary of Wisława Szymborska’s birth, the exhibition has been enriched with excerpts from the poems by the poetess and essayist, Nobel Prize laureate in literature. Art and poetry complement each other, leading the viewer through the successive parts of the show.

The Bunkier Sztuki collection, which is over half a century old, comprises paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, photographs, interactive installations, videos and documentations of ephemeral art. Nearly 450 works by Polish and foreign artists display a variety of art trends and subjects. At the same time, the universal nature of the language of art makes the stories created on this basis permanently up-to-date and interesting.

The works presented at the current exhibition talk about ourselves: closed inside bodies assigned by nature, but also about attempts at breaking cultural stereotypes. They reveal the richness of means of expression, gestures and possibilities of narrating countless stories of the lives of others and our own that has been given to us.