AA alumnus Wojciech Mazan, who studied on the Projective Cities MPhil programme at the AA has co-curated the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2021, on the theme 'Trouble in Paradise'.

The exhibition is a multi-threaded story about the future of communal life in the countryside. The project is curated by PROLOG +1 (Mirabela Jurczenko, Bartosz Kowal, Wojciech Mazan, Bartłomiej Poteralski, Rafał Śliwa and Robert Witczak) — a team of young architects selected in an open competition. The exhibition features work carried out in collaboration with Polish artists, showing the contemporary problems of the countryside through a photorealistic panorama that fills the space of the pavilion. Created by photographers Michał Sierakowski and Paweł Starzec, as well as artist Jan Domicz, in collaboration with the curatorial team, the panorama depicts the characteristic elements of the rural countryside which are the result of the processes that have shaped its landscape for the past 100 years.

PROLOG +1 invited six architectural teams from Europe to the speculative part of the exhibition: Atelier Fanelsa (Germany), GUBAHÁMORI + Filip + László Demeter (Hungary), KOSMOS Architects (Russia, Switzerland, Austria), Rural Office for Architecture (Great Britain), RZUT (Poland) and Traumnovell (Belgium). The result of their work are architectural models, collages and drawings presented in the pavilion against the background of the panorama.

The exhibition is accompanied by the book Trouble in Paradise, which includes essays by Platon Issaias & Hamed Khosravi, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Andrea Alberto Dutto, Katarzyna Kajdanek, Łukasz Moll, a photo essay by Jacenty Dędek, as well as texts by the PROLOG +1 team. The book is available for sale at the Zachęta art bookstore and in La Biennale’s bookstores, as well as for download in digital format.

The Trouble in Paradise is open to visitors of 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia from 22 May – Sunday 21 November 2021.

View the exhibition online

Photo credits:

Trouble in Paradise exhibition in the Polish Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2021.

Photo: Jacopo Salvi (Fpro.it)

Images courtesy Zachęta ¬— National Gallery of Art