Feminist Seminar XXXV. Racism will not pass 📅 29.11.2025, 1:00 PM–4:00 PM 📍 Studio Gallery, pl. Defilad 1, Warsaw 🆓 free admission 🔴 live broadcast will be available on the Studio Gallery's Facebook profile Currently, we are facing another wave of racism. Cultural racism is gaining strength, based on stereotypical perceptions and diminishing of people from other cultures, leading to their marginalization. Racism, fascism, Nazism, xenophobia, homophobia, sexism are fuel for populist politicians, who offer a simple solution to the complex problems of today's world—declining capitalism, climate crisis, waves of migration—by finding a scapegoat in the form of the Other. In Polish society, largely white and monocultural, not only migrants but also Poles of different skin colors must confront racism, as in Polish racism, only a white person can be a "true Pole." Racism is a system of socially legitimized practices. It is connected to power and social privileges. It can manifest in physical and verbal aggression, but its causes lie in political, economic, and cultural mechanisms. Racism has affected individuals and entire communities since colonial times. It takes various forms and evolves. In American society, it was slavery, then lynching of Black people, racial segregation, and systemic discrimination hindering African Americans' social advancement. In Nazi Germany, the pseudoscientific concept of dividing people into superior and inferior races justified the persecution and extermination of Jews, as well as the murder of other ethnic minorities, including Roma. Racism leads to genocide. Joanna Rajkowska—the author of the Palm on Jerusalem Avenue, reminding of the uprooting and persecution of Polish Jews—in 2023 organized, together with American-Jewish artist Robert Yerachmiel Sniderman, a protest at the Palm against the genocide in Gaza carried out by the state of Israel in retaliation for Hamas's brutal attack on Israeli civilians. The artist calls: "We must break the vicious cycle of violence! The only way out is freedom and equality for all." Schedule of presentations: - 1:00–1:20 PM Dorota Walentynowicz "Mechanisms of exclusion of non-white people through visual representation technologies" - 1:20–1:40 PM Katarzyna Sienkiewicz "Is she really Belarusian?" – cultural racism towards Belarusian natives of Podlasie - 1:40–2:00 PM Łukasz Wójcicki "About the performance by the Strefa WolnoSłowa Foundation 'Imperium'" - 2:00–2:20 PM Joanna Rajkowska "Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue, or about our relationship with Palestine. Works from 2001–2025" - 2:20–2:40 PM Mo Tomaszewska "Community art, censorship, and ethics of representation" - 2:40–4:00 PM discussion The event accompanies the exhibition WE WANT THE WHOLE LIFE. SHARING The exhibition will last until March 1, 2026 Curators: Anka Leśniak, Karolina Majewska-Güde, Paulina Olszewska, Agnieszka Rayzacher, Dorota Walentynowicz Funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund—a state special-purpose fund.
