Nie woda nie ziemia: An Exhibition Exploring Marshlands, History, and Contemporary Politics

The exhibition 'Nie woda nie ziemia' explores the ambivalent nature of marshlands, which act as archives of the past, spaces of refuge, and contemporary contested territories. It delves into themes of geology, myth, and modern politics, questioning how landscapes that resist drying out persist and offer a different, slower tempo.

The exhibition 'Nie woda nie ziemia' (Not water not earth) begins in a place where time does not flow linearly, but rather stagnates and thickens underfoot. In peatlands, low oxygen and acidic water slow the decomposition of organic materials, turning them into unintended archives that preserve forgotten histories in a 'moist present'. These bogs, often revealing 'bog bodies' with traces of ritual violence, question the price of order and the reasons for sacrifice. Simultaneously, these areas have historically served as hiding places for those who needed to disappear to survive, their inhospitable terrain paradoxically offering protection. This ambivalence resurfaces today at 'green borders,' such as the Polish-Belarusian frontier, where forests and bogs become death corridors. Here, waterlogged earth functions as both shield and weapon, obscuring, slowing, and hindering aid. Historically dismissed as 'wastelands' to be tamed, bogs are now re-emerging in the context of extractivism, targeted for military installations or as sites where water cools technological infrastructure, forming the hidden backbone of the digital economy. The exhibition traverses threads connecting geology, myth, and contemporary politics, asking what happens when a landscape refuses to dry out. In a world obsessed with hard boundaries, the bog offers a different pace: slower, saturated, persistent. Artists treat the bog as an anoxic zone, a space that slows decay, preserves violence and dreams, and destabilizes what we consider 'rational.' The exhibition's discreet visual marker is the mineral vivianite, with its hypnotic greenish-blue hue, found on bones and wet wood, signifying what has been repressed.

The exhibition is open from Tuesday to Sunday, with varying hours. Specific ticketing or admission information beyond general opening hours is not detailed on this page, but it is implied to be part of the museum's general admission or programming.