Karolina Grzywnowicz. Desensitization

16.10.2026 – 10.01.2027 Karolina Grzywnowicz. Desensitization

Zachęta – National Gallery of Art

curator: Katarzyna Kołodziej-Podsiadło substantive collaboration: dr Pamela Dalton (Monell Chemical Senses Center, Philadelphia), Ocalenie Foundation, unsound exhibition design: Julia Cieślak

In her latest works presented at the exhibition, Karolina Grzywnowicz addresses the political aspect of the senses – she looks at how the authorities may target the body, including both our sensory experiences of reality and our basic physiological processes. She demonstrates how targeting the senses may cause pain, disorientation, anxiety, and exhaustion, ultimately leading to submission. At the same time, she discovers forms of grassroots opposition, and looks for new tools of resistance.

The artist focuses on regions affected by the humanitarian crisis: the border between Poland and Belarus, and Palestine. Especially in times of conflict, state borders are areas that lay bare the mechanisms of necropolitics. Those include systemic tools and practices used by authorities to decide whose life is protected and who may be left out to die. In this sense, migration policy no longer ensures a system of protection, and instead becomes a oppressive system of exclusion. This is supported by misinformation, militarised infrastructure, and – in the Białowieża Forest – the natural environment itself, which may turn into an inescapable trap for the refugees.

The videos, objects, and installations presented at the exhibition – including the olfactory one – treat the senses as a political sphere that may be shaped, disturbed, and brought to submission. The sense of smell is particularly important in this context, and it is at the centre of the new project titled Desensitization. The artist focuses on the olfactory aspects of the border experience in the Białowieża Forest, lived by both refugees and those who help them. Grzywnowicz works with scent not only as a trace of presence or evidence of violence, but also as a potential healing tool. Traps show how the natural environment of the Białowieża Forest becomes part of the border enforcement mechanism. The video installation stems from research conducted by biologists, who used trail cameras to document the impact of border infrastructure on local ecosystems, especially animal migrations. The scientific project has produced a body of evidence – an unplanned, grassroots archive that documents life and violence at the border.

Combat Breathing (2025) addresses the issue of survival under oppression, starting with the experience of how teargas affects the body. The most fundamental physiological activity of breathing becomes a political act. Grzywnowicz is interested in the experience of people who have lived under occupation for years, and in their ways of protecting themselves and their communities. In Bedtime (2021), she addresses sleep deprivation – the tactic of denying people the opportunity to rest and sleep in peace, used in Palestinian refugee camps. In response, the artist has recorded lullabies sung to children there, which take on special importance under permanent siege. They are a form of care, but also a medium that preserves memory and ensures cultural continuity. The recorded voices belong to Palestinians, consistently deprived of the right to live.

Grzywnowicz reflects on the phenomenon whereby the senses are weaponised, with perception and corporeal experiences used as mechanisms of exerting control. At the same time, she shows how individuals and communities can regain control over their aesthesis.

Karolina Grzywnowicz (born 1984) is a visual artist active at the junction of art, research, and activism. Her practice is based on cooperation with specialists from various fields as well as local communities and refugees, and aims at creating spaces for interaction and knowledge sharing. She creates situations and interventions through installations, sculpture, and film.

Her works have been presented at institutions such as Akademie der Künste der Welt (Cologne, Germany), Hellerau – Europäisches Zentrum der Künste (Dresden, Germany), Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art (Warsaw), and The Indian Museum in Kolkata (India). In 2024, she took part in the CEC ArtsLink fellowship programme in New York and Chicago, where she prepared a solo exhibition at Watershed Art & Ecology in Chicago. She has participated in residencies at Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart, Germany), Ujazdowski CCA (Warsaw, Poland), in Ramallah (Palestine), Pondicherry (India) as well as the Tokyo Art and Space (Japan). In 2022, the Distillates project earned her the Special Prize at the Warsaw Gallery Weekend. She has also received scholarships from the Berlin Senate and the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage for 2025. A graduate in comparative literature, she lives and works in Berlin and Warsaw.

We would like to thank Studio Lekko for preparing the exhibition’s visual identity concept pro bono.

Adaptation: Aleksandra Sienkiewicz