HAEM

The exhibition “HAEM” by Anna Baumgart at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art brings together the artist’s works from different stages of her career, from early videos and sculptures to her newest installations made for the Centre. It opened with a vernissage on 23 October 2026 and runs 23 October 2026 - 28 February 2027.

The Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art on the exhibition (our translation):

The exhibition HAEM brings together works by Anna Baumgart from different moments of her practice - from early video works and sculptures to the newest installations made for the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art. Set side by side, works from different stages of the artist’s activity form a story in which recurring themes, images and tensions resonate in entirely new contexts.

The central motif of the exhibition is the female body - present in Anna Baumgart’s work for years as a kind of space of record: of identity, memory and resistance. In her work, however, it is never purely private; it remains entangled in social, political and environmental relations. In it, the individual is constantly interwoven with the collective.

What to expect

The haem of the title is the component of haemoglobin that binds oxygen and gives blood its red colour. According to the museum, in Baumgart’s work it becomes a figure of flow and of the ceaseless circulation of life. At the same time it points to what connects people with other organisms, with history and with the environment.

The museum refers to the artist’s works on motherhood, sexuality and the right to decide for oneself. It places them within present-day debates on the rights of humans and of more-than-human beings. What makes these works exceptional, in the museum’s view, is above all their artistic consistency and originality, thanks to which questions posed years ago remain open.

The exhibition draws on the thought of Luce Irigaray and Astrida Neimanis, who describe organisms as open systems of interdependence. Along with the blood, as the museum puts it, affects and memory circulate here. Experience appears in this view as a relational phenomenon that crosses the boundaries of a single body.

The museum warns that the exhibition contains depictions of blood and touches, among other things, on self-harm. It asks visitors to take this into account and to look after their own comfort.

The exhibition is curated by Michał Jachuła, and its producers are Joanna Saran and Brygida Czartoryska. The visual identity is by Fontarte.

Context

Anna Baumgart was born in Wrocław in 1966. The Polish Wikipedia describes her as a visual artist and a representative of critical art and feminist art. According to the English Wikipedia, she is best known for large installations and for film, and she is based in Warsaw.

The exhibition at Ujazdowski Castle includes both film and installations: from early video works, shown alongside sculptures, to the newest installations made for the Centre.

Tickets and time

• Where: at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art. Directions are on the museum profile.
• When: the exhibition runs 23 October 2026 - 28 February 2027.
• With children: the museum leaves the decision to bring children into the exhibition to their guardians, because it shows blood and touches on self-harm.
• Who it’s for: people interested in critical and feminist art and in the themes of the body, motherhood and self-determination, and anyone wanting to see Baumgart’s work from different years in one place.
• Who can skip it: people for whom depictions of blood and the theme of self-harm are too distressing, since the museum itself warns of this content.

See also

• Can Red Be Trusted - new paintings, spatial works and animations by Róża Litwa about trust, with the red of the title alluding to Anne Carson’s verse novel “Autobiography of Red”.
• Almost Everything - a retrospective of Aneta Grzeszykowska, whose basic creative material is her own body.

Museum profile: Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art.