Meanders (2025) were prepared with a long strip of unbleached canvas resembling a flag as a part of the group exhibition Coalition of Waters (2025) at the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art in Słupsk and Ustka.

Coalition of Waters

artists: Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, Karolina Bielawska, Karolina Breguła, Dobrawa Borkała, Blanka Byrwa, Manthia Diawara, Gosia Golińska, Sylwia Górak, Hyerim Han, Ewelina Jarosz, Ranjit Kandalgaonkar, Kinga Kiełczyńska, Ru Kim, Yulia Krivich, Kelly Krugman, Elżbieta Kulka, Honorata Martin, Rupali Patil, Theresa Weber, Piotr Wyrzykowski

29.08–31.10.2025

curatorial team: Agnieszka Kilian, Romuald Demidenko

Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art
Słupsk & Ustka + plein-air activities

“Displayed in three different locations of the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art, the exhibition showcases the output and works of contemporary artists that address environmental issues. It focuses on strategies for observing our immediate surroundings in the face of climate change, taking as its departure point nearby bodies of water: the River Słupia and the Baltic Sea. The reflection on water as a force that transcends borders, dissolves divisions and renders reality more symbiotic and relational has been inspired by Édouard Glissant’s thought and his concept of an interconnected whole-world (French: Tout-monde).

Coalition of Waters attempts to capture the interplay of connections and tensions, and promote a deeply ecological perspective that digresses from the instrumentalising of aquatic and coastal biotopes, favouring coexistence – interspecies solidarity and translocal alliances.

[…]

Karolina Bielawska creates abstract compositions and painterly installations. For this exhibition, she has prepared a work using a long strip of unbleached canvas resembling a flag. The artist addresses the theme of liquid flow and bodies of water in the immediate surroundings – biotopes, peatlands and wetlands, which sustain the region’s biodiversity. The work becomes a symbolic image of a river, whose current defines the axis of the city and leads toward the sea coast several kilometres away. It is also a gesture of recognition towards the agency of watery matter, an unstoppable force which, despite transformations in the urban landscape, retains its vitality – connecting and transcending the boundaries of a human-dominated world. Created specifically with this exhibition in mind, the work continues Bielawska’s cycle focusing on the subjectivity of more-than-human beings.”

Text excerpt by Romuald Demidenko, 2025