On 14 May 2025, the main exhibition of the Three Seas Art Festival titled “Revealing What Is Barely Intuited” opened at the Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art in Kraków.
The exhibition is the result of international curatorial and artistic residencies held earlier this year, bringing together artists and curators from 14 countries across Central and Eastern Europe.

The title of the exhibition is derived from an essay by Danish social anthropologist Kirsten Hastrup, who describes creativity as a process occurring between talented individuals and the culture in which they exist. This idea inspired the curatorial team to identify shared threads and points of intersection among the participating artists’ practices.

The exhibition features objects, installations, videos, and photographs created specifically for this project. The artists reflect on five guiding concepts: habitation, natural environment, materiality, community, and technology. Each artwork lies at the intersection of these ideas, revealing subtle and unexpected relationships. In several works, the city of Kraków itself becomes a point of inspiration and a symbolic reference.

Participating countries include Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Turkey, Ukraine, and the civic society of Belarus.
The exhibition is curated by Kata Balázs-Miklós, Weronika Plińska, and Agnieszka Sachar and will be on view until 31 August 2025.

Simultaneously, the Podbrzezie Gallery in Kraków hosts the exhibition “Designed Communities – Between Reality and Vision” (on view until 8 June 2025).
Curated by Katarzyna Wojdyła, the exhibition explores the potential of design as a tool for building communities and shaping identity. The project reflects on how visual communication, graphic design, and spatial design can serve as a language of social connection and participation.

An international group of designers, inspired by the guiding idea of ​​the Three Seas Art Festival, examines the relations between the individual and society.

 

Among the participating designers are Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka, Dagmara and Jacek Latała, Marta Gawin, Studio Otwarte, Spiilka Design Büro (Ukraine), and the Plastic Justice collective, an international research and art project involving partner institutions from Reykjavík, The Hague, Barcelona, London, and Vilnius.
The exhibition invites reflection on how design can strengthen a sense of belonging and openness and contribute to the formation of shared social imagination.

On 15 May 2025, the exhibition “Shifted Horizons”, presented at the Potocki Palace Gallery in Kraków, came to a close.
Curated by Sebastian Bożek and Witold Winek, the show examined the fluid boundaries of perception, exploring how shifts in scale and perspective can shape our understanding of contemporary reality. Featuring works by artists from Poland and across the region, the exhibition questioned whether art can diagnose the condition of modern society and whether perceptual dissonance can become a creative impulse.
The exhibition was also part of Cracow Art Week KRAKERS 2025.

The exhibition draws attention to the issue of the perception of a distorted, oneiric and ambiguous reality and provokes the question of how artists react to the growing sense of absurdity and changes that go beyond the framework of logical order.
Is art a form of diagnostics of the condition of modernity? Or maybe the creative impulse generated by the experience of cognitive dissonance leads to the construction of alternative models of reality? Or maybe we are heading towards imaginary, unreal worlds, perceived as safe and stable?
The horizon, traditionally understood as a symbol of the border between the known and the unknown, is fragmented in this process, thus opening up new narrative spaces.

A major intellectual highlight of the festival was the international debate “Common Development – Three Seas Art Festival Debate”, co-organised and hosted by the International Cultural Centre in Kraków (ICC).
The discussion brought together leading experts on Central European culture to reflect on shared heritage, contemporary challenges, and 25 years of the Visegrad Fund’s activity.
Speakers included Maja Wawrzyk (International Visegrad Fund), Paweł Szczepanik (City of Kraków), Ciprian Mureșan (Romania), Małgorzata Kaźmierczak (AICA International), Nina Vrbanová (City of Bratislava), Barbora Kundračíková (Olomouc Museum of Art – SEFO), and Péter Inkei (Budapest Observatory on Cultural Funding).
The panels were moderated by Rafał Solewski and Martyna Nowicka-Wojnowska.

fot. Olesia Kaminska

Another exhibition in the festival programme, “Fragile Images”, is presented at the Ethnographic Museum in Kraków (Dom Esterki, 46 Krakowska St.) and remains open until 29 June 2025.
The show juxtaposes paintings on glass from the Carpathian region with contemporary works by artists from Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Ukraine.
It reflects on the fragility of artistic matter and explores how contemporary creators draw on cultural heritage to reimagine and reinterpret it in the present day.

Artyści współcześni: Ivana Sláviková, Jaroslav Pilát, Barbora Šaroun Semberová, Pavel Jestřáb, Irina Botea Bucan, Dan Vazentan, Yana Hudzan, Marzena Kolarz, Andrzej Najder.

Zespół kuratorski: Jana Babušiaková, Maria Działo-Nosal, Grzegorz Graff, Marzena Kolarz, Raluca Oancea

Wystawę można oglądać w galerii Dom Esterki, ul. Krakowska 46 w Krakowie.

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English

Until June 29, 2025, you can see the festival exhibition „Kruche obraz / Fragile Images”. The exhibition combines works from the collection of the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow and interventions by contemporary artists from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine and Romania. „Fragile Images” is also a story about two periods of modernization of the region – the one at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and the effects of the political transformation of the 1990s and 2000s.

The curatorial team includes Jana Babušiaková, Maria Działo-Nosal, Grzegorz Graff, Marzena Kolarz, and Raluca Oancea.
Participating artists include Ivana Sláviková, Jaroslav Pilát, Barbora Šaroun Semberová, Pavel Jestřáb, Irina Botea Bucan, Dan Vazentan, Yana Hudzan, Marzena Kolarz, and Andrzej Najder.

The Three Seas Art Festival 2025, organised by the Three Seas Initiative Cultural Cooperation Network (3SICCN), highlights the creative and cultural potential of collaboration within the region.
Through a programme of exhibitions, residencies, debates, and artistic interventions, the festival provides a platform for intercultural dialogue and a laboratory for new ideas.
In the spirit of its title, the Festival reveals and explores what is barely intuited, encouraging reflection on art’s role in shaping a more connected, imaginative, and sustainable future for Central and Eastern Europe.

FUNDS

Project implemented with the financial support:

•  International Visegrad Fund as part of the „Smart Power of Culture – Challenges of a Common V4 Identity vs. the Three Seas Perspective” project
• University of the National Education Commission, Krakow as part of the „Excellence Initiative – Research University” program and from the UKEN Research Fund
• City of Krakow

Until June 29, 2025, you can see the festival exhibition „Kruche obraz / Fragile Images”. The exhibition combines works from the collection of the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow and interventions by contemporary artists from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine and Romania. „Fragile Images” is also a story about two periods of modernization of the region – the one at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and the effects of the political transformation of the 1990s and 2000s.

The exhibition is the result of the work of an interdisciplinary team of curators from Poland, Slovakia and Romania as part of the Three Seas Art Festival 2025. Using museum exhibits and contemporary works by artists, it invites you to reflect on the fragility of works of art and the delicacy of the material from which they were made. The exhibition is filled with folk paintings on glass from the collection of the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow and works of contemporary artists from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Ukraine and Poland. Works from so many places encourage reflection on the cultural richness of the Three Seas countries and their heritage preserved in the museum and still being collected for future generations. This is an attempt to show how contemporary artists draw inspiration from their culture and how important it is for them to be rooted in the places they come from and which shape their work, thanks to which they create subsequent moving fragile paintings.

Contemporary artists: Ivana Sláviková, Jaroslav Pilát, Barbora Šaroun Semberová, Pavel Jestřáb, Irina Botea Bucan, Dan Vazentan, Yana Hudzan, Marzena Kolarz, Andrzej Najder.

Curatorial team: Jana Babušiaková, Maria Działo-Nosal, Grzegorz Graff, Marzena Kolarz, Raluca Oancea

The exhibition can be viewed in the Dom Esterki gallery, ul. Krakowska 46 in Krakow.

We are publishing a record of an exciting debate „Common development – Three Seas Art Festival debate”, co-organized and hosted by the International Cultural Center in Krakow.

We invited outstanding experts in the field of Central European culture to talk about the common heritage and contemporary times of the region. We asked about common denominators and the state of cooperation between institutions and cultural circuits of the Three Seas Initiative countries, as well as about the legacy of 25 years of the Visegrad Fund. The debate was opened by: Łukasz Galusek, Program Director of the International Cultural Center in Krakow and Łukasz Murzyn, Chief Curator of the Three Seas Art Festival.

The opening speech entitled: „The Central European Pendulum” was given by Richard Gregor, Director of the Peter Michal Bohúň Gallery in Liptov, Liptovský Mikuláš, Slovakia.

The first panel: „International Cultural Cooperation in Central Europe – Heritage and Present” was attended by:
Maja Wawrzyk, Deputy Executive Director of the International Visegrad Fund,
Paweł Szczepanik, Plenipotentiary of the Mayor of Krakow for Culture,
Łukasz Galusek, Program Director of the International Cultural Centre in Krakow,
Ciprian Mureşan – Curator, artist, Romania,
moderator: Rafał Solewski.

The second panel: „Common development – ​​25 years of the Visegrad Fund” was a discussion of experts in the field of public support for cultural institutions. The following people took part in the conversation:
Nina Vrbanová, Head of the Department of Culture of the City of Bratislava,
Małgorzata Kaźmierczak, President of AICA International,
Barbora Kundračíková – Curator of the Olomouc Museum of Art-SEFO,
Péter Inkei – Budapest Observatory: Regional Observatory of Cultural Financing in Central and Eastern Europe,
moderator: Martyna Nowicka-Wojnowska.

We hope that the conversation will provoke further reflection and activity for the cooperation of the scientific and artistic communities of the Three Seas Initiative countries and the entire region. The debate showed both the potential for cooperation and the scale of the challenges that the possible rapprochement of our artistic circuits brings.

On May 15, 2025, the exhibition „Shifted Horizons” presented at the Potocki Palace Gallery in Krakow ended. We publish a report from this event.

Shifting the horizon – a term that, in our opinion, reflects a complex perceptual and cultural phenomenon, characterized by a change of perspective, a disruption of proportions, and a departure from a realistic perception of the world. In a cultural context, this process manifests itself through the deconstruction of familiar landscapes, a change of scale and boundaries, leading to the derealization of reality.

The exhibition draws attention to the issue of the perception of a distorted, oneiric and ambiguous reality and provokes the question of how artists react to the growing sense of absurdity and changes that go beyond the framework of logical order.
Is art a form of diagnostics of the condition of modernity? Or maybe the creative impulse generated by the experience of cognitive dissonance leads to the construction of alternative models of reality? Or maybe we are heading towards imaginary, unreal worlds, perceived as safe and stable?
The horizon, traditionally understood as a symbol of the border between the known and the unknown, is fragmented in this process, thus opening up new narrative spaces.

This concept oscillates on the border between reality and imagination, exploring the liminal areas of human perception. Shifted horizons evoke the impression of fluidity and changeability, resonating with mental and dreamlike landscapes, blurring the distinctions between fiction and reality.

The exhibition also situates its considerations in the context of contemporary challenges, with particular emphasis on the issue of artistic cooperation at the European level. It thus enables reflection on relations in the field of art in a broad spectrum – locality, heritage, common or divergent points of reference.
The exhibition can be viewed until May 15, 2025. The event is also part of the Cracow Art Week Krakers 2025 program.

Artists:
Bruchnalski Filip, Cholewa Stanisław, Gil Krzysztof, Hadrian Dorota, Hajdo Mateusz, Hryshchuk Denys, Jargusz Piotr, Koros Radim, Kostewicz Michał, Łuczyna Małgorzata, Łukaszewska Agnieszka, Mayen Eric, Murzyn Łukasz, Najder Andrzej, Niespodziewana – Rados Małgorzata, Nowacka Natalia, Ogórek Ernest, Olbrychtowicz Maria, Padło Tomasz, Peszko Konrad, Pierzchała Jakub, Plińska Weronika, Rafalski Mateusz, Sadowska Anna, Wasilewska Maria, Wielek Małgorzata, Wojas Angelika, Wywiórski Sebastian, Zaskórski Bartosz

Curators: Sebastian Bożek, Witold Winek
Visual identification of the exhibition: Konrad Peszko

The culminating events of the Three Seas Art Festival 2025 are ahead of us. On May 14, we invite you to the opening of the main exhibition of the festival „Revealing what is partly sensed”.

The host and co-organizer of the exhibition is the Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art in Krakow.

The title of the exhibition was taken from an essay by Danish social anthropologist Kirsten Hastrup. The author states that creativity is a process that takes place between talented individuals and the culture in which they function. In her opinion, being creative is associated not only with inventing things that did not exist before, but also with proposing a new way of understanding the reality we already know by revealing what is partly sensed. The task of the curatorial team was to indicate the connections and key issues, to capture common points in the work of artists from 14 countries who took part in the project.
The organizers invited cultural institutions from the countries belonging to the Three Seas Initiative: Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Hungary, as well as from Denmark, Turkey, Ukraine, and the Civil Society of Belarus to cooperate. Each institution selected a curator and an artistic person or collective who proposed a work on a topic of their choice from a wide range of issues related to the idea of ​​equitable development. The joint exhibition was preceded by simultaneous curatorial and artistic residencies. Some of the works were created during the artists’ stay in Krakow, while others used this time for research. The exhibition will present objects, installations, videos, and photographs created specifically for this project. In an attempt to outline common points, the curatorial team selected five concepts that can serve as signposts during the tour: habitation, natural environment, materiality, community, and technology. All works are situated at the junction of these slogans, indicating the non-obvious relationships between them. In several, the thread of Krakow appears – for some projects, the city turned out to be an important source of inspiration and a point of reference.

According to the idea of ​​the initiators – institutions creating the Three Seas Initiative Cultural Cooperation Network (3SICCN) – art is to be a way of anticipating and prototyping solutions that respond to the most important challenges of modern times. Perhaps in this context, the presented works are also a harbinger of a new order, the existence of which we only just sense.

Festival residents, curatorial and artistic teams taking part in the exhibition:

Margarethe Makovec, Wendelin Pressl (Austria)
Vera Mlechevska, Dimitar Shopov (Bulgaria)
Barbora Kundračíková, Pavla Beranová, Jiří Suchánek (Czech Republic)
Kristian Handberg, Kristoffer Ørum (Denmark)
Elli Leventaki, Morus Project – Kleopatra Tsali, Hanna Norrna, Irini Gonou (Greece)
Alexandra Tamásová, Erik Sikora (Slovakia)
Áron Fenyvesi, Rita Süveges (Hungary)
Vaiva Jucevičiūtė-Bartkevičienė, Ričardas Bartkevičius (Lithuania)
Weronika Plińska, Anna Pichura (Poland)
Călin Corneliu DAN, Ciprian Mureșan (Romania)
Kaja Kraner, Uršula Berlot Pompe (Slovenia)
Ostap Manulyak, NURT Group – Mykhaylo Barabash, Tereza Barabash, Roman Haideichuk, Yaryna Shumska (Ukraine)
Olga Mzhelskaya, Ala Savashevich (civil society of Belarus)
Melike Bayik, Gözde Ju (Turkey)

Curators of the exhibition: Kata Balázs-Miklós, Weronika Plińska, Agnieszka Sachar

The exhibition will be open until August 31, 2025.

The first stage of the Three Seas Arts Festival 2025 has come to an end, leaving behind a rich trace of creative activities and intercultural encounters.

From 9 to 24 February, as part of a simultaneous artistic residency, Krakow became a space for an intensive exchange of ideas and experiences for artists and curators from 14 countries of the Three Seas Initiative and the entire region.

Wszystkich uczestników rezydencji poznacie tutaj –  w naszym cyklu prezentacji zespołowych.

You can meet all the participants of the residency here – in our series of team presentations.

The residency was a time full of inspiring conversations, joint explorations, and work in places that shape Kraków’s contemporary art scene on a daily basis – galleries, studios, and artistic institutions. The participating artists had the opportunity to confront their ideas with the local environment, which was reflected in the projects they developed. The works created during the residency combine sensitivity to this year’s festival theme, each artist’s individual approach to art, and the influences resulting from meetings and new experiences.

One of the key events was the workshop „Creative Laboratories: Middle Grounds and Derivatives”, led by a curatorial-artistic team from the Czech Republic. The workshop explored various ways of defining art-based research and art created using methodologies, techniques, and technologies from different fields of contemporary science. It also provided an opportunity to evaluate the ideas developed by the international teams involved in the project.

What else awaits us as part of the Three Seas Arts Festival?
From April 25, the international design exhibition „Designed Communities – Between Reality and Vision”, inspired by Benedict Anderson’s concept of „imagined communities”, will be on display at the Podbrzezie Gallery. That same day, the „Fragile Images” exhibition will begin at the Ethnographic Museum in Kraków. On April 26, the international visual arts exhibition „Shifted Horizons” will open at the Potocki Palace Gallery linking our festival with the program of this year’s Krakow Art Week Krakers. In addition, the festival will be accompanied by the „BWA-Europa” project containing conferences, workshops and numerous events in 22 city galleries throughout Poland! However, the highlight of the festival will be the main exhibition, presenting the results of the residency teams’ work. Its opening is scheduled for May 14 at the Bunkier Sztuki – Gallery of Contemporary Art.
We warmly invite you to continue following the Three Seas Arts Festival – as you can see, many extraordinary artistic encounters still lie ahead!

The full festival program is available here.