The Polish Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2016 directly responds to this year’s theme – Reporting from the Front – by addressing the ethical issues facing one of the most underrepresented participants in architecture: the construction worker.

How was folklore and folk art perceived directly after the war and in the first decades of the Peoples Republic of Poland? How did the ‘people’s’ government make use of it? How did its status change, the moment it was introduced into museums and galleries? What was the status of the folk artist — perceived as ‘the other’?

The exhibition revolves around one of the most interesting phenomenons in 20th-century Polish design: so called Łysa Góra experiment (1959–1968). In 1949–1992, the Kamionka Cooperative of Folk and Artistic Industry operated in Łysa Góra, a village located between Tarnów and Kraków.

This exhibition presents artists of the middle and younger generation from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. The invited artists live and work in their countries of origin, as well as in Europe or North America, but most often they permanently move between these two worlds (sometimes they are called modern urban nomads). Often educated overseas, they receive scholarships or are in touch with the world through global media.