The Trouble in Paradise exhibition in the Polish Pavilion treats the countryside as an independent area of research and seeks within it answers to the main theme of this year’s Biennale Architettura 2021 in Venice: How will we live together?
Exhibition curators, PROLOG +1 collective, in collaboration with an international group of architects and artists, will show that in times of growing local and global crises, rural areas are an important element of building sustainable human environments.
On May 22nd, the opening day of the exhibition, a digital version of the project will launch online at labiennale.art.pl. The exhibition in the Polish Pavilion is organised by Zachęta — National Gallery of Art in Warsaw.
Trouble in Paradise is a multi-faceted story about the future of communal life in the countryside. That is where the authors of the exhibition see the potential for discussion on what is common — going beyond the division into the public and the private. Reflections on the marginalised issue of large rural areas and the progressive migration from cities to these areas became an impulse for the creation of speculative visions by the architectural teams from Europe invited to the project. They are accompanied by an in-depth analysis of forms of working and living in the countryside, which resulted in the Panorama of the Polish Countryside, created in collaboration with Polish artists. The case study of Poland — a country in which 93 per cent of the area is rural — allows us to understand the specificity of post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe and to identify problems and proposals for solving them on a global scale.
