Art Thema Gallery

general curator: Peter Fertőszögi
curator on behalf of Zachęta: Małgorzata Bogdańska
participants: Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary

Our heritage: where the past meets the future

The V4 cooperation is not only a common regional foreign policy roadway the background of which is congruent geopolitical interests but a comprehensive interpretation of the Eastern Central European past and, at the same time, building the future with strategic goals as well.

When this format first showed its colors  in Visegrcid, not far from Budapest on February 5, 1991, our countries had to achieve the goal that the Soviet troops
should leave our region without troubles  and for good. And that long lost freedom that we had been  yearning for should return to us. But already at that time, in the decisive moments of the beginning of the 1990s, you could recognize that the cooperation among the Czechs, Hungarians, Poles and Slovaks was, besides the mutual representation of interests, also the preservation of the values of Eastern Central Europe. Of all the things that was possible to rescue from the boots of the police of the dictatorships in the 20th century. Things that certain global trends have recently started to threaten after we had finally opened up greatly and amid the successful transformation of our region that can now be called of historic significance. It was simultaneously that all these events drew the attention to the necessity of regional cooperation to build the future, and that required taking stock and evaluating the lessons of our common past that goes back at least to a thousand years.

The internal changes in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia in 1989­-90, the restoration of the democratic system, as well as the withdrawal of the threatening Soviet army made it possible for the region of Visegrcid to return to its own history that had gone awry for half a millennium.

In the past decades, there have been some minor attempts to display contemporary V4 fine arts. However, the comprehensive approach that we are undertaking now is unprecedented. This exhibition is to demonstrate that V4 cooperation is limited not only to politics and the economy, but it is bound to underline the cultural values of the spirit of Visegrcid in the 21st century and display a segment of contemporary fine arts in the Headquarters of the European Union. Hungary - as the Presidency of the V4 - has made conscious efforts to build bridges between our region and Brussels in order to gain new momentum in the field of cultural life beyond the existing political and economic cooperation.

More about the exhibition.