The exhibition by Maryna Tomaszewska "WAW. CITY AND WOMEN'S STREETS" will be presented from September 19, 2025, to February 22, 2026, at the DSH headquarters at Karowa 20 in Warsaw. The curator of the exhibition is Joanna Warsza. 📅 WGW 2025: The exhibition is presented as part of Warsaw Gallery Weekend 2025 in the WGW+ section. https://warsawgalleryweekend.pl/wgw-plus?wgw=1 Every second person living in Warsaw is a woman or identifies as such, yet this is hardly reflected in urban planning or street naming. How many streets bear the names of women? Many times a day, we pass, pronounce, and write addresses, often unaware of their meanings or the notable figures behind them. Warsaw has 5,800 streets and squares, of which about twenty percent are named after specific individuals. Nearly 1,300 of them are named after men, while only about 150 are named after women. Often, these are dead-end streets or alleys. The exhibition by Maryna Tomaszewska "WAW. CITY AND WOMEN'S STREETS" invites you to one such alley. Embedded in the context of DSH, the installation reverses the invisibility of women on city plaques, presenting feminist statistics, gendered fabric maps, and detailed biographies of invisible matriarchs, most of whom can be found in Białołęka or Targówek. The exhibition highlights the significant asymmetry in the historical-cultural narrative regarding gender representation in public spaces, but it also carries hope. An alley is both an end and a beginning, a dead end but also an opening for reflection on what a feminized public space would look like. What can women, their perspectives, thinking, and experiences bring to urban planning? 📖 This fall, DSH will also publish the art book "WAW" by Maryna Tomaszewska, which will be available at the DSH Bookstore. The graphic design of the book was created by Martyna Wędzicka-Obuchowicz, who is also the author of the exhibition's visual identity. The book's premiere will take place on October 18 as part of the Heroines Festival 2025. The publication is co-financed through an artistic scholarship from the City of Warsaw. The project partner is Stadtkuratorin Hamburg. Maryna Tomaszewska – interdisciplinary artist working in the fields of objects, installations, performances, and artist books. Editor-in-chief of "Periodyka Najgorszy." Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where she leads the Experimental Text Studio at the Faculty of Media Arts. Her work addresses topics such as text as an artistic medium, death, mechanisms of power, and feminism. She has participated in exhibitions at BWA Wrocław, BWA Zielona Góra, CSW Zamek Ujazdowski, MATCA in Cluj-Napoca, OOF Gallery in London, Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast, as well as art book fairs – NY Art Book Fair and LA Art Book Fair. Recipient of scholarships from the City of Warsaw, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, and the "Young Poland" program. Her artist books are part of collections at institutions such as MoMA, SFMOMA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate, and Victoria and Albert Museum. Joanna Warsza – curator of the city of Hamburg, editor, essayist, mother. Curator and co-curator of numerous exhibitions, urban projects, and conferences such as the Georgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2013), the Polish Pavilion in Venice with Małgorzata Mirga-Tas and Wojtek Szymański (2022), Radical Playgrounds, Gropius Bau, Berlin (2024), the 3rd and 4th Autostrada Biennale in Prizren, Kosovo (2021 and 2023), Public Art Munich (2018), the 7th Berlin Biennale (2012). From 2014 to 2024, she was the program director of CuratorLab at Konstfack University of the Arts in Stockholm. She has edited over 15 publications. Her interests include political art, activism, performativity, and decolonization theory in Eastern Europe, as well as the role of art in public spaces.
