Never ones to shy from controversy, MSN’s newest exhibition takes an alternative look at the abortion debate…

MSN’s latest exhibition seeks to present a personal perspective aimed at lending an existential dimension to… abortion. Freeing this topic from “destructive stereotypes”, the organizers hope to showcase society’s differing standpoints as well as the role of religion and the state in the debate. According to co-curator Magda Lipska, “the aim is to wrest the subject from the control of political cliches and restore its personal dimension.”

Titled ‘Who will write the history of tears’, the name is borrowed from a painting by the American artist Barbara Kruger, and this itself will form an integral part of the exhibition. Alongside it will be a now-legendary poster that first appeared on the streets of poster in the autumn of 1991.

Co-curator Sebastian Cichocki added: “Together with other museum institutions, we reviewed the art of the 1990s and its key traditions impacting current art.

Our principal partner was the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. We identified numerous similarities between the social situations in Poland and Ireland in which the battle for women’s rights was central.”

A documentary film has also been created especially for the exhibition, based on oral history, depicting the protests in defence of women’s rights in Poland in the 1990s.

As for the exhibition space, that’s been designed by the German architect Johanna Meyer-Grohbrügge and alludes to Womanhouse, organized in 1972 by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, the first feminist exhibition in the United States.

Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw

Wybrzeże Kościuszkowskie 22, artmuseum.pl