‘Radical Hope’ at the Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast

radical_hope_img_0080.jpg, default, ‘Radical Hope’ exhibition at the Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast, photo: GTG

The ‘Radical Hope’ exhibition, organized as part of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute’s UK/Poland Season 2025, reveals thelandscape of a world in crisis. Yet it is precisely in such moments of disintegration of old orders and structures that the artists’ courage to look towards the future reveals its greatest power.

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Hope is not a luxury – it is a necessity. It is not passive. It is not escapism, nor a denial of the present’s complexity. Rather, it is a radical act: the courage to imagine a future not dictated by the inertia of the past. In an age saturated with curated distraction and commodified crisis, to hope is to resist despair and envision a more humane alternative.

Author

source: https://galeriaarsenal.pl/en

The above is argued in the text accompanying the Radical Hope exhibition by Peter Richards, co-director of the Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast, which hosted a presentation of works from the Białystok Arsenal collection, curated by Monika Szewczyk. The radicalism of hope he describes is perfectly clear today: in a reality dominated by the threat of war (or already affected by it), reports of genocide, and the intensified power of racist and xenophobic narratives, allowing oneself to hope can be interpreted as naive at best, blind at worst. Today, an open declaration of hope can indeed be considered an act of radical thinking.

Organized as part of the Polish-British cultural season, the exhibition follows precisely this trail – the trail of thought that attempts to transcend existing boundaries (ideological, ethnic, national), offering new perspectives and insights. In each of the works on display, one can discern a record of a utopian fantasy, a possible emancipatory scenario just waiting to be realized, like an old dream. This is the case, for example, in Konrad Smoleński’s 2012 installation The End of Radio, which consists of nearly 200 microphones positioned on a podium. Heavily modified sounds emerge from the devices – a recording of a street survey, distorted to such an extent that it is difficult to recognize a human voice. While Smoleński’s overwhelming installation speaks to media transformations – the end of the ‘radio era’, in which content was broadcast by centralized outlets, and the advent of the time when content is produced grassroots by media users – it also holds the promise of agency, of someone one day standing in front of a microphone and shouting.

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‘Radical Hope’ exhibition at the Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast, photo: GTG

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Diana Lelonek’s film and installation, Forms of Survival (2020), offers a different perspective on hope for change. On the screen of a TV embedded in dry grass and covered with earth, we watch idyllic views of nature. A dispassionate voice comes from off-screen, reading imaginary letters the artist received from various collaborators after… well, after what? An ecological disaster? A pandemic? A humanitarian crisis? The disaster-scarred world of Lelonek’s work is not at all far removed from the reality around us. And it’s not all that dystopian, either, although funding for cultural activities has been virtually cut therein, and exhibition programs have proven impossible to implement. Art institutions are welcoming climate refugees and engaging in volunteer assistance, becoming spaces for testing new kinds of society – his time, one based on entirely different principles than those that led to droughts, species extinctions, and bloodshed along arbitrarily demarcated national borders.

Although contemporary political imagination tends to discourage the envisioning of other models of social relations, history has shown us that brief but significant moments were possible in which emancipatory projects not only came to the fore but also became a vibrant part of everyday life. This is the case with Piotr Uklański’s untitled work, consisting of two photographs. The first captures an overhead view of soldiers dressed in red and white sweatshirts, arranged into the distinctive logo of Solidarity: the word ‘Solidarność’ (Solidarity) with the Polish flag flying above the letter ‘N’. The second depicts the moment when the men leave their designated positions and disperse – so that the legibility of the logo is completely blurred. While Uklański’s work can be read on a universal level, as a commentary on the inevitable devaluation, and perhaps even the discrediting, of various ideas, especially those that momentarily have such a broad appeal – it is worth recognizing his ironic the affirmative potential of his ironic work, a declaration of faith that even if the windows of new possibilities open only briefly, the air that flows through them has a long-lasting refreshing quality.

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‘Radical Hope’ exhibition at the Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast, photo: GTG<

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This air, however, can sometimes be suffocating, as Hubert Czerepok and Lada Nakonechna warn. In the former’s 2011 film, Lux Aeterna, images of Norwegian landscapes, austere industrial spaces, and car tunnels carved into the mountains are accompanied by off-screen readings of excerpts from Juliusz Słowacki’s Kordian, Anders Breivik’s manifesto, and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The artist employs this juxtaposition to acknowledge the common origins of European Romanticism, a philosophy and culture focused on the individual, and right-wing extremisms inciting violence and racial hatred. Hope and beauty, Czerepok seems to suggest, can, after all, become masks for hatred and contempt.

The darkness in which Czerepok’s work is immersed is illuminated by the regular flash of Nakonechna’s Mobile Portable Model (2014) – reminiscent of a lighthouse, but also of a prison guard’s tower. The light is sometimes directed at a barely visible inscription on the wall: ‘After we saw the lighthouse, the majority of us decided to swim ashore’, alluding to the humanitarian catastrophe of migrants heading for Europe, who often pay the ultimate price for attempting to cross the sea or the forest. The curatorial text reads:

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On the one hand, it is the light of trust and faith, which may lead to a safe shore; on the other, it is the terrifying light of searchlights tracking a fugitive, which heralds the end to all hopes for a better life. The recipients of Nakonechna’s installation find themselves in this ambiguous situation. The wall is a boundary which may perhaps be crossed […]

Author

trans. Klaudyna Michałowicz, source: https://galeriaarsenal.pl/en/

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‘Radical Hope’ exhibition at Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast, photo: GTG

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Similar density characterizes Zhanna Khadyrova’s installation Shots (2010–2014), a collection of ceramic tiles on which the artist recorded experiments consisting in destroying them by striking them with heavy objects or shooting at them with rubber bullets. The cracks, sprawling like spiderwebs from the point of impact, invite reflection on the fragility of the material and its susceptibility to annihilation in the artist’s hands. The work’s abstract allure also has a dark reverse side, revealing what is happening to Ukrainian homes, objects, and even the Ukrainian people defending themselves against Russia.

Marina Naprushkina’s Your Fear – Our Capital / Your Hate – Our Mandate from the series Moabit Red, realized between 2013 and 2020, is a reflection on relocation and settling. The multi-element patchwork print features slogans reminiscent of those written on banners during demonstrations (‘A – Angst, Angela, Arbeit, AFD’), screenshots of conversations with loved ones, and images found online. This visual collage reveals the essential characteristics of the intercultural migrant experience: multi-layeredness, dispersion, the uncertainty brought about by a different context, and, at the same time, the joy of putting down new roots. The Germany-based Belarussian artist engages with the local migrant community, working to promote their integration and participation in social life, while her work reveals the activist entanglement of her work: connecting the political with the artistic.

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‘Radical Hope’ exhibition at the Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast, photo: GTG

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The Belfast exhibition undoubtedly paints a panorama of a widespread crisis encompassing many areas of life. However, it must not be forgotten that the word ‘crisis’ comes from a Greek term meaning resolution, breakthrough, decision – even the darkest point of a crisis, therefore, holds the possibility of a different future, a transformation of the status quo. Artists only indirectly point to possible solutions, but they undoubtedly encourage us to see space for the courage of utopian imagination in this critical moment. As Richards wrote, this is no longer a luxury, but an ethical necessity resting not only on artists.

Radical Hope: A Collection of Works from Collection II of the Arsenał Gallery in Białystok. Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, 13/09–08/11/2025
Curator: Monika Szewczyk
Artists: Hubert Czerepok, Zhanna Khadyrova, Diana Lelonek, Lada Nakonechna, Marina Naprushkina, Konrad Smoleński, Piotr Uklański
The event is part of the UK/Poland Season 2025 organised by the British Council, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Polish Cultural Institute in London, financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Poland.

Translated from Polish by Michał Pelczar

Language English