Common ground for a common good. A look into the Toruń Centre of Contemporary Art’s new exhibition “No Man’s Land”.

“No Man’s Land” exhibits serve as a reminder that above all differences, there are parts of the world COMMON for all of us. 

Nowadays, migration has become a significant part of our everyday life, and this is the social phenomenon that the project “Common Ground” sheds light on. The second exhibition of the project is called “No Man’s Land” (the first exhibition was held in Reykjavik last December and focused on food as a factor that binds people of different nationalities). The exhibition in Poland leaves the house and focuses on the outside. 

With the help of experts, artists, and researchers invited, the exhibition explains the causes and effects of migration, promoting intercultural communication planted with empathy and understanding, aiming to establish a COMMON GROUND.

In the project took part 18 artists from 3 countries – Poland, Iceland, and Lithuania: Tomas Andrijauskas, Páll Haukur Björnsson, Andrii Dostliev, Sylwia Gorak, Andrius Grigalaitis, Marija Griniuk, Solveiga Gutauté, Maciej Kwietnicki, Sindri Leifsson, Pétur Magnússon, Živilé Minkuté, Julija Pociūté, Kristín Reynisdóttir, Ala Savashevich, Anna Sigríður Sigurjónsdóttir, Wiola Ujazdowska, Ragnhildur von Weisshappel, Magda Wegrzyn. The exhibits include organic installations, performances, audio descriptions, and many more.

When we meet face-to-face with another person, he or she ceases to be a stranger to us, there’s no potential fear anymore, instead there is connection. Through personal communication, we are able to find in another person things that may be familiar to us, COMMON”.
— Paulina Kuhn, Manager of the “Common Ground” Project

There are no parties, just neighbours we haven’t yet met

Whatever the new open space is – a garden, a meadow, a forest, a river, a wasteland… These are all neighbours we haven’t yet met. The role of the exhibition shown in “No Man’s Land” is to start a conversation, resulting in collaboration and focusing on the relationship between migrants and “hosts”. The exhibits visitors can encounter in CCA in Toruń include means of expression with the use of interactive, contextual, or site-specific media that reflect the aforementioned relationship between migrants and “hosts”. 

“Not only people migrate, but also animals and plants, so in this project, we try to look at everything more broadly, we cooperate with ananthropologist, philosopher, and climate specialist. The artists’ attention has focused, for example, on the weeds. They come unwanted, spreading wherever they find a little earth, water, and sun. And we tear them out”.
— Paulina Kuhn, Manager of the “Common Ground” Project

The exhibition also reflects the perception of “home” from various perspectives and helps to indicate and define what exactly our responsibility as communities, but also as individuals is. On our part we need to take action and create an interculturally successful dialogue, promoting empathy and understanding. 

Europe, a common ground. Contemporary art, a tool for empathic communication

Looking at the growing number of migrants in the European countries, exhibits of projects such as “No Man’s Land”, may serve as intellectual and artistic means of communication, which are emotionally and information-loaded artworks that seek to strengthen intercultural dialogue. Europe and its bodies are responding to the mass migration, and so is art. The “Common Ground” together with the “No Man’s Land” exhibition aims to influence and alter the way we perceive and feel identity as both individuals and Europeans, deepen our belonging to Europe. 

The “Common Ground” project is both social and artistic in the roots, as its goal is to move and influence individuals and communities. That is why the emotional aspect of the “No Man’s Land” exhibition is addressed by the involvement of the audience, people are invited to share their opinions, views, and feelings. “No Man’s Land” highlights that even though there are natural differences between cultures and communities, there is also a natural COMMON GROUND.

In “No Man’s Land” exhibition there are various interdisciplinary activities. The artists, researchers, and experts carrying out artistic actions use contemporary art, as a tool of communication and understanding. The curators and organizers have invited artists representing various fields of art: painting, drawing, graphics, sculpture, visual arts, photography, and video using the full potential of contemporary art.

It’s about emotions, understanding, humanity, and unity

The project’s purpose first and foremost is to establish a COMMON GROUND. “No Man’s Land” is, therefore, a trip to the roots, an artistic medium that shows the parts and bits of the world that unify us as humans. As Paulina Kuhn, the Manager of “Common Ground” Project mentioned, intercultural and in person to person communication is powerful and can have a real impact: “Face-to-face meetings, which are a huge part of the “Common Ground” project, are so important because they give the possibility of a peaceful confrontation, which, as in the case of this project, takes place at a common table, during joint activities in a gallery or planting flowers in a city flower bed. It is all about discovering the other person. The stranger ceases to exist”.

Experts and researchers invited to the project enriched the visual aspect proposed by the artists with an intellectual approach. This was a well-thought move taken by the “Common Ground” project Team, to ensure that the members of the audience fully understand the reasons and effects behind migration. The recipients can actively participate in the exhibition’s activities focusing on the unifying bits of the intercultural world surrounding us. And why “No Man’s Land?”, Paulina Kuhn worded it this way: “In Poland, in the full bloom of spring, our group went outside, into the garden, forest, meadow, into an open, unfenced space. A question arose about erecting fences, and borders, and as we went further, we started to wonder if this land, or rather the Earth, is really someone’s. Or maybe we humans are temporary guests?”.

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The Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Toruń is the leader of this project, which will be carried out until 2023. The invited artists (six people from each country) will take part in three successive residencies, which will result in three intercultural exhibitions (one in each country). The third edition of the exhibition will be held in Lithuania this year.

Project partners:

• Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Toruń
• Akademía Skynjunarinnar / Academy of the Senses – a non-governmental organization (ICELAND)
• Lietuvos dailininku sajunga / Lithuanian Artists’ Association – artists association (LITHUANIA)