Polana Institute: Mikołaj Sobczak and Tadeusz Kantor
May 8 - Aug 1
NADA House

The New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) is pleased to announce the third edition of NADA House, returning to Governors Island with 66 galleries, non-profits, artist run spaces, and curators, presenting over 100 artists. The collaborative, public exhibition will take place May 8 – August 1, 2021 in an expanded format, with gallery presentations in over 50 rooms in three neighboring turn-of-the-century colonial revival buildings.

Polana Institute presents Mikołaj Sobczak and Tadeusz Kantor. The characters on Sobczak's curtain tell an alternative, subversive version of the history. Tadeusz Kantor's theater performed in New York twice in the 1980s, seeing intensified protests by activists for LGBTQ rights and antiracism. However, none of these street events and social-political fervor influenced the shape of the performances. That is why demonstrators appear on the fabric as new performers, mixing with Kantor's iconic characters or employees of the La Mama Theater, asking the question about the inclusiveness of contemporary art, but also the possibility of reevaluating past works.

In the second half of the nineteen seventies, Tadeusz Kantor worked on an exhibition for the Foksal Gallery in Warsaw, an exhibition which was never to make it as far as the vernissage. It was conceived as a show of his ‘rough drafts’; the notes, jottings, various types of drawings and so forth which he made while working on his theatrical productions. The idea was to show them as enlarged photocopies.

Special thanks to Tadeusz Kantor Foundation and Foksal Gallery