The competition aimed at employing art to express Poland's solidarity with the combatant Belarusian nation. The exhibition went on display in Warsaw and elsewhere in Poland and abroad, including in Vilnius and Athens. It has now been donated by the National Centre for Culture Poland to the Free Belarus Museum to testify to the Belarusian people's fight and struggle for independence.

Presented to the invitees were 17 works centred around the Belarusian society's unprecedented bid for democratic change in the aftermath of the rigged presidential election of 2020. White and red prevail in the posters as the colours of the flag deemed national by the Belarusian democratic opposition and émigré circles. They allude to the colours of the historical symbol of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Pahonia, which is a coat of arms featuring a white horseman on a red escutcheon.

At the preview of the exhibition, the MFA was represented by Head of the Foreign Service Arkady Rzegocki and MFA Spokesperson Łukasz Jasina. The meeting was also attended by Pawel Latushka, former Ambassador of Belarus in Poland, former Belarusian Minister of Culture, currently Deputy President in the United Transitional Cabinet of Belarus, and Natalia Pinchuk, spouse of Belarusian 2022 Nobel Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski.

In his keynote speech, Minister Arkady Rzegocki underlined that “Poland relentlessly supports activities aimed at building a sovereign, open and stable state of Belarus, whose independent and democratic functioning is an element of Polish raison d’état”.

He added that “the establishment of the Free Belarus Museum in Warsaw, in a country where Solidarity was born, is a proof of trust and sense of community, and an expression of hope that Belarus will also manage to embark on a path to democratic transformation”.

The minister also noted that “it is a challenge not to lose this trust and a motivation for even greater involvement in the support for democratic aspirations of the Belarusian society”.

The event was organised at the Free Belarus Museum to mark the 105th anniversary of the proclamation of the Belarusian Democratic Republic celebrated on 25 March. It is a holiday when the Belarusian society celebrates its independence, known as Freedom Day and unrecognised by the Lukashenko regime.

Łukasz Jasina
MFA Spokesperson