Mikołaj Sobczak at the Polish Institute Düsseldorf: Experience art and memory
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Mikołaj Sobczak at the Polish Institute Düsseldorf: History as a Living Artistic Experience
With Divide and rule, the Polish Institute Düsseldorf presents the first institutional solo exhibition of Mikołaj Sobczak in the city. The exhibition, curated by Krzysztof Kościuczuk as part of Manifesta 16 Ruhr, opens a space for painting, video, performance, and installation, where history does not appear as a closed narrative but as an open field of conflicts, memories, and counter-images.
An artist who reinterprets historical images
Mikołaj Sobczak, born in 1989 in Poznań, works at the intersection of painting, video, and performative formats. His art questions established historical narratives and centers marginalized perspectives, particularly queer and trans positions. This is where the strength of his work lies: the past does not seem distant and museum-like but present, contradictory, and politically charged.
Tableaus between memory and resistance
The exhibition brings together key works from various phases of his creation and leads into multifaceted visual worlds where real biographies, symbolic figures, and imagined scenarios collide. In the artist's performance and video practice, timelines are shifted, body histories are made visible, and omissions in historiography are named. Sobczak's figurative painting works with surreal moments, collage-like compressions, and an expressive color palette that keeps the viewer's gaze restless, alert, and attentive.
History painting in the light of the present
Particularly exciting is Sobczak's access to the tradition of history painting. Instead of heroic master narratives, alternative scenarios arise, questioning power relations, persecution, resistance, and solidarity anew. The exhibition makes clear how much art can act as cultural education: it not only imparts knowledge but sharpens perception for visibility, exclusion, and societal negotiation.
Manifesta 16 Ruhr as a cultural resonance space
The presentation is embedded in the context of Manifesta 16 Ruhr, thus part of a larger international art discourse. The Polish Institute Düsseldorf presents itself as a committed place for contemporary art, exchange, and mediation. The exhibition connects aesthetic experience with art historical reflection and is aimed at visitors who want to experience contemporary art in its social dimension.
What visitors can expect
Those who enter this exhibition will encounter a concentrated, intellectually dense, and simultaneously sensually strong staging. Sobczak's works open new perspectives on memory culture, identity, and political imagination. Divide and rule invites you to not only observe history but to renegotiate it in the space of art. A visit is worthwhile for anyone who wants to experience a demanding, inspiring, and contemporary exhibition.
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