The event was opened by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture and National Heritage Piotr Gliński and Secretary of State Piotr Wawrzyk of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who noted that two years ago the Belarusian nation was robbed of its votes. “We must not forget all the people who took to the streets, who said ‘no’ to a fraud, ‘no’ to a violent regime. We must not forget those who are now suffering in prisons,” said Piotr Wawrzyk.

Poland consistently supports efforts to build a sovereign, open and stable Belarusian state guided by democratic principles. National Centre for Culture Poland, in cooperation with the MFA and in the spirit of solidarity with the Belarusian nation, held an international poster competition titled White–Red–White. Its purpose is to remind the world of the Belarusian nation which struggles for freedom and human rights, and to commemorate the heroes of the 2020 protests.

Almost 250 works were submitted for the contest. Three of them were awarded and fourteen artists received honourable mentions. The winning poster was Kamil Skrzypiec’s Belarus 2020–2022. His piece features a broken chain whose links are the final digits of the years 2020 and 2022. Another remarkable work is the one by a Belarusian artist Evgenia Muzheva titled We Are Not Meat. The female body in the poster is marked to resemble the division of a carcass into primal cuts.

A total of 19 boards on display are dominated by white and red, the colours of the flag which is considered national by Belarusian democratic opposition and émigrés. It is a reference to the historical coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Pogonia, featuring a white horseman on a red field.

“We want the exhibition to be shown across the world as a token of our support to the Belarusian nation’s liberty and democracy aspirations on the one hand, and on the other hand to reach the widest audience possible with the message of the bad situation in Belarus,” underlined Deputy Minister Piotr Wawrzyk. He assured that Polish diplomatic missions will promote the exhibition throughout the world.

The exhibition is open to the public at the Royal Łazienki in Warsaw until 4 September 2022.

 

Łukasz Jasina

MFA Press Spokesperson

 

Photo: Bartosz Peterman / MFA