The Kyiv Biennale in Warsaw: The Empire Strikes Back

engin_sengenc_blank_maps_551_35_-_geometry_of_time_msn.jpg, default, Lana Čmajčanin's artwork at the exhibition 'Near East, Far West', Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, photo: Alicja Szulc, press, The Kyiv Biennale in Warsaw: The Empire Strikes Back

#photography & visual arts

The exhibition ‘Near East, Far West’ is a dark journey beyond the comfort zone into Eastern Europe, where the forces of imperialism, colonial violence and tyranny are currently having their moment. There’s no need to look for this unfortunate land on the map – we are its inhabitants.

Since the Ukrainian-Russian war rages on, the Kyiv Biennale begins in Warsaw, not Kyiv. The main exhibition of the event opened on 3rd October 2025 at the Museum of Modern Art. This artistic institution sits in the very centre of the capital of a country where there are growing ranks of citizens declaring that Ukraine’s struggle with Russian imperialism is ‘not our war’. And the biennale? Is it ‘ours’? Or is it another war refugee received in Warsaw with the usual Polish smile of hospitality – one that’s starting to look more like a grimace of impatience and irritation?

Of course, the exhibition is about conflict, but not only – and not primarily – about the one raging in Ukraine. The war in question takes place in a land called Near Eastern Europe. And – whether we like it or not – it very much is ‘our war’.

Made in Ukraine: a biennale without illusions

The rise of the art biennale as an institution is a child of the end-of-history era. We remember those promises from the 1990s – history was supposed to end with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the liberal West’s triumph in the Cold War. As globalisation accelerated, biennales blossomed all over the world, like ornamental plants in the global village’s gardens.

Warsaw also considered launching a biennale, as every ambitious country was supposed to have one. Nothing came of it except talk. In Ukraine, things moved beyond words. The first Kyiv Biennale happened in 2015 – a year after the Maidan and the Revolution of Dignity, but also just after Russia annexed Crimea and launched its conquest of the Donbas.

Kyiv’s biennale joined the global art biennale calendar late – at a time when late-20th-century illusions about the historical victory of liberal democracy had largely dissipated. The idea for the Kyiv Biennale wasn’t born in a ministry, a major museum or a city hall, but was a grass-roots project by the Visual Culture Research Center (Центр візуальної культури) – an NGO bringing together independent curators, activists and theorists. This genesis determined the character of the biennale, which has always been more of a forum for critical reflection than an art spectacle or promotional machine for art-market stars.

Prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion, there had been four editions of the event. The fifth, held in 2023, was a project executed by the VCRC together with a ‘coalition of the willing’ forged by several European institutions under the ‘L’Internationale’ banner – including Warsaw’s Museum of Modern Art. The Kyiv Biennale became a constellation of exhibitions and art events unfolding in different European cities. This is also the format of the current edition. This Warsaw exhibition inaugurates the biennale, while its other chapters will open by year’s end in Antwerp, Kyiv, Dnipro and Vienna.

How far is the Near East?

Aykan Safoğlu, 'Rosette', 2024. An artwork exhibited in the 'Near East, Far West' exhibition, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2025, photo: Alicja Szulc

The Warsaw chapter of the biennale is titled Near East, Far West. The title suggests a geographical focus, and indeed, one of the first works awaiting visitors is a map. Its size is massive, but upon first glance it is not immediately clear which territory it describes. Rather than a map, it is a stack of maps printed on translucent sheets by Sarajevo-born artist Lana Čmajčanin, all on top of one another and backlit. Together, they form a multi-layered, tangled, nearly unreadable picture of a region with blurred borders. Only after careful study do visitors discern Bosnia and Herzegovina amongst the cartographic chaos.

Čmajčanin’s maps are a testament to all the imperial manoeuvres, invasive appetites, nationalist projects, wars, treaties and deals that have targeted Bosnia over the centuries. This country has always sat on the edge of civilisations and spheres of power, often as contested territory passing from hand to hand.

Is Bosnia’s case unique or extreme? Yes, but it is emblematic of Central Europe, where borders are never once and for all. In this region, every territory is contested ground, with a multitude of actors from the geopolitical arena simultaneously making their imperial, ethnic, colonial, historical, religious, ideological and economic claims.

So perhaps we need to redraw the existing maps? Maybe instead of talking about Central Europe, we should talk about Near Eastern Europe?

Thunder from a dark sky

Hito Steyerl, 'Leak. The End of the Pipeline', 2024. An artwork form the 'Near East, Far West' exhibition, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2025, photo: Alicja Szulc/MSN

Near Eastern Europe is a term coined by the biennale’s creators – the L’Internationale curatorial team proposes it as a tool for critical cartography exercises. What region does it cover? It stretches from the European countries of the former Warsaw Pact, through post-Soviet Central Asia and the Balkans, all the way to Kurdistan and Palestine. That’s the geography of the exhibition – visiting it is a trek through areas of political instability, places scarred by imperial and neocolonial violence and populism, fields of lost emancipation battles, and spaces of unfulfilled hope.

At the Kyiv Biennale, geography and cartography – disciplines that have traditionally served imperial and colonial powers so well – are wrested from the hands of authority. Artists refashion them into subversive weapons. The privileged visual form here is landscape. What landscapes emerge when we enter the Museum of Modern Art?

One scene shows Republic Square in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city. Saule Suleimenova portrays the city in a panoramic, monumental collage. To see it in full, one must retreat to the wall opposite. Closer inspection reveals it consists of countless plastic bags, fixed with hot silicone.

The fact that this impressive work is made from plastic, from waste – de facto, from rubbish – only intensifies its expressive impact. The piece, titled Sky over Almaty / Bloody January, features a plastic, ominously black sky above a city rendered in red.

‘Bloody January’ is a reference to the tragic events of winter 2022, when Kazakhstan saw anti-government protests that seemed poised to become one of the ‘colour revolutions’ – rebellions whose influence have brought down regimes and dictatorships in the post-Soviet region. But in January 2022, Kazakhstan’s leadership quashed the unrest – with Russian help. Over 200 people died during the pacification. A few weeks later, Putin launched an all-out war against Ukraine.

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Saule Suleimenova, 'Sky over Almaty / Bloody January', MSN, photo: Alicja Szulc

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In another room, visitors lay on their backs to watch an overhead video screen showing the sky above Beirut. The artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan observes it anxiously through his camera lens – and listens even more intently. The sky hums, growls and booms. These are the sounds of the Israeli aircraft that have colonised Lebanese airspace: drones, jets, rockets and helicopters. In the distance are the echoes of explosions. It’s a landscape of militarised sky, polluted with ominous noises and the contrails of war machines. We look up into this vast sky, which at any moment might crash down on the artist’s head, bring death, or deliver a bomb or missile as abruptly as a lightning bolt.

Another landscape: Tbilisi, captured in twelve black-and-white photos by Koka Ramishvili. It’s the holiday season at the turn of 1993. The artist takes photographs of the city from his mother’s flat window, aiming at the not-so-distant parliament building, above which smoke billows for twelve days straight. Fights are raging throughout the centre of Tbilisi. The opposition is overthrowing the anti-Russian government of Georgia’s first democratically-elected president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia. This revolution was one of many dramatic episodes in the Caucasian republic’s quest to break free from post-Soviet Russian influence and march towards democracy. Today, the country still hasn’t completed this journey, with recent political developments even interpretable as a march in reverse.

The exhibition also features a landscape in the form of an installation by Nikita Kadan. Or perhaps it’s more a classroom? Chairs and desks fill the gallery, with books and catalogues on their surfaces. Kadan invites us to a history lesson on Ukrainian art. Between the desks are sculptures on high pedestals – these particular pieces were not modelled in studios, but rather created on the Ukrainian-Russian war front. Within the context of the museum, they are abstract art objects. But in the war zone, they were fragments of ruined homes and institutions, twisted remnants of machines, tools and structures destroyed in explosions.

It’s hard not to think this classroom is a classroom of the dead – Kadan himself calls it a ‘house of ghosts’. The history of Ukrainian art is turbulent, with threads frequently breaking away. The artistic narrative mingles with stories of war, repression, imprisoned artists, and records of lost works, destroyed museums and evacuated collections. Yet, at the same time, Kadan’s installation is about the extraordinary vitality of Ukrainian culture – the creative power of both the dead and the living, about a strength that has resisted the forces of destruction. The outcome of these struggles still remains undecided.

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Nikita Kadan, 'Silence in the classroom', MSN, photo: Alicja Szulc

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The exhibition ends with visitors entering a screening room showing Dana Kavelina’s film Grey Earth. Visually stunning, this puppet animation features two protagonists: a wounded Ukrainian soldier who regains consciousness to find himself alone on the battlefield – the front has moved, and his comrades have either left him or perhaps been killed. The other protagonist is a cow from a factory farm that had been heading for the slaughterhouse when its truck was hit by a stray shell. The animal is now free, but what should it do with this freedom? The soldier and cow traverse a war-torn land. This post-apocalyptic landscape – a tormented earth – becomes the third protagonist.

Where are the Jedi?

Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, 'Until we became fire and fire us'. An artwork from the show 'Near East, Far West', Museum of Modern Art i Warsaw, 2025, photo: Alicja Szulc

As visitors wander through the devastated front-line landscapes of Kavelina’s characters, read art books amongst ruins, or gaze into the whirring drone-filled sky, it is hard not to succumb to melancholy. Paradoxically, the museum’s magnificent spaces only intensify this mood. We walk past pristine white cubes, view spectacular installations, large-scale projections, yet each work recounts failed revolutions, suppressed revolts and dashed hopes. There’s a sense that, much like in the 1990s, we are witnessing yet another end of history, but this time in reverse: now it’s the end of democracy, which has been engulfed by the shadow of fascist radicalisation and the brutalisation of political life. If this exhibition were a Star Wars episode, it could well be called The Empire Strikes Back.

With this George Lucas metaphor in mind, can we hope for a Return of the Jedi after this dark chapter? And could artists play the role of galactic knights bringing people light?

There’s no simple answer. The exhibition also includes an impressive installation realised by German art star Hito Steyerl in collaboration with Philipp Goll and Oleksiy Radynski. It fills the gallery space with a huge, tangled pipeline visitors can sit on and watch a five-channel projection. The film serves as an artistic investigation into Germany’s energy dependence on Russian resources, beginning in the late 1980s during the twilight of the USSR, with its climax in the Nord Stream scandal. Steyerl’s team examines dangerous links between capitalism and imperialism, and also art itself – many German-Russian deals were adorned with cultural events and exhibitions sponsored by energy firms from both countries.

Nihil novi! Art isn’t innocent – we’ve known this for a long time. It’s splendid that Steyerl exposes the complicity of museums and artists in beautifying and normalising the interests of politicians and capital linked to authoritarian regimes. But that’s nothing new either. Steyerl’s piece, along with the rest of the art shown at Near East, Far West, always seem one step behind events. Artists endeavour to map, document and represent zones of conflict, violence and injustice, but there are just too many flashpoints to name them all. The Empire is striking back, and the Jedi knights seem to be on the defensive.

Touring the exhibition, one ends up searching for a revolutionary moment or an answer to ‘What is to be done?’. But answers are elusive. Does this mean the Kyiv Biennale has failed? Hardly – placing responsibility upon artists would be unfair. The exhibition is better seen as a projection of helplessness demonstrated by the liberal world in the face of populism, fascism and capitalist-imperialist alliances, which are now having their five minutes. The open question is: how long will these minutes really last? The answer depends on artists and institutions just as much as on every one of us.

People expecting a large international exhibition will find what they came for. Those seeking hope at this event or a think tank capable of offering ready solutions to our polycrisis are likely to be disappointed. But perhaps we were in need of such an emotionally difficult, pessimistic, even mournful exhibition.

Just before the biennale opened, a true art tsunami had swept through Warsaw. During the Warsaw Gallery Weekend and Fringe festivals, nearly 150 exhibitions and artistic projects took place in just two weeks. It is wonderful that art is blooming, the economy is growing, and Poland is knocking on the G20’s door. The war in Ukraine does continue, but we’ve already grown accustomed to it. Terrible things are happening in Gaza – but what can we do? The tragedy goes on, but in the Middle East, which is so far away, so that isn’t our war.

Within that context, the biennale’s concept of Near Eastern Europe seems not just interesting but like a cold shower. This unpleasant bath – this uncomfortably honest exhibition – helps us realise where we truly are, accept the fact that the wars being waged are ‘ours’, and regain a sense of reality, an essential condition for taking action.

Originally written in Polish, Oct 2025, translated by Adam Zulawski, Nov 2025

Language English

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