Warsaw Under Construction 18. Sovereign and Fed

The eighteenth edition of the Warsaw Under Construction festival at the Museum of Modern Art takes on food sovereignty: where Warsaw’s food comes from, and whether the city could feed itself from its own region. Rather than sketching a distant future, the festival offers practical answers for the present - agriculture treated as part of urban planning.

Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej on the exhibition:

The main theme of WARSAW UNDER CONSTRUCTION 18 in 2026 is food sovereignty, which is becoming an important element in contemporary urban development strategies. In a world where large supply systems and energy policies are losing stability, and global supply chains are increasingly disrupted, cities capable of self-regulation and based on local production networks are the ones that can survive and develop. Warsaw, with its historical agricultural background and still existing cultivated areas, has a real opportunity to become a laboratory for such a model.

A sovereign and fed city is one where agriculture constitutes one of the main elements of urban planning. Countryside and city are not opposites, but parts of a single ecosystem. Urban cultivated areas - agricultural land, allotment gardens, orchards, home gardens, and community crops - form its structure just like roads, squares, and buildings. Agriculture penetrates into the very center of the city, and food becomes the bond connecting its economy, culture, and daily life. Realizing this vision requires developing agricultural areas surrounding the city - the so-called nourishing zone, from which crops for residents’ needs originate. This zone extends approximately 80-100 kilometers from Warsaw, but its elements are also present within the city: in the form of traditional ground crops, greenhouses, hydroponic systems, or mushroom cultivation in basements and garages. What is local forms the foundation of the city’s self-sufficiency and resilience.

Warsaw is built on fertile land. As late as the first half of the 20th century, its outskirts consisted of a belt of villages and orchards - cultivated areas that fed the center. Today, many of these places have disappeared under development, but traces of the former nourishing zone are still present in the city’s space: in street names, in allotment gardens, in home orchards, and in the memory of residents. Returning to these themes today does not mean nostalgia, but an awareness that the city’s development has always depended on soil, water, and people who knew how to work with them.

The festival also does not propose a vision of a distant future, but practical answers to the present - a project for a city that feeds itself from the region’s resources and integrates agriculture, horticulture, and communal cooking and eating into the basic circulation of urban life. At the same time, it is an invitation to look at Warsaw from the perspective of its metabolism - how it nourishes itself, how it breathes, how it manages energy and matter. Food here becomes a starting point for a discussion about the relationships between people, nature, and infrastructure, and the question of food becomes a question about the whole - about space, economy, and responsibility for the place where one lives.

Bazar Egipska, Aleksandra Bilewicz, Agnieszka Chołuj, Maja Demska, Agata Dudek-Wojewoda, Aneta Englot, Monika Fedorczuk, FLOW (Agnieszka Brzeżańska & Ewa Ciepielewska), Tomasz Fudala, Anna Galas-Kosil, Agnieszka Gąsiorek, Stanisława Golinowska, Ryszard Jaśkowski, Gosia Kępa, Michał Kuź, Grzegorz Lewicki, Maciej Łepkowski, Katarzyna Maciąg, Ludwik Majlert, Sébastien Marot, PIOTROWSKA / SZCZĘŚNIAK (Sara Piotrowska, Maciej Szczęśniak), Łukasz Radziszewski, Ryszard Rawski, Adam Rogala, Jan Sajdak, Sebastian Sarzyński, Ewa Smuk-Stratenwerth, Spółdzielcza Farma MOST, Łukasz Maurycy Stanaszek, Carolyn Steel, Spółdzielcza Farma MOST, Stowarzyszenie Dla Nas, Wiktor Strumiłło, vgtbl.pl, Anka Wandzel, Warszawski Rolno-Spożywczy Rynek Hurtowy „Bronisze”, Aleksandra Wasilkowska, Małgorzata Zarzycka, Zbiory, Patryk Zduńczyk, Izabela Zygmunt

What to expect

The starting point is the idea of a nourishing zone - a belt of agricultural land stretching roughly 80-100 kilometres around Warsaw, supplying the crops that reach the city’s residents. The festival shows that parts of this zone also operate inside the city: traditional ground crops, greenhouses, hydroponic systems, mushroom cultivation in basements and garages, allotment gardens, orchards and home gardens. The historical thread goes back to the first half of the 20th century, when a belt of villages and orchards on the city’s edges fed the centre. Much of that land now lies under development, but traces survive in street names, allotment gardens and the memory of residents. The organisers are explicit that this is not nostalgia, but an awareness that the city’s growth has always depended on soil, water and the people who knew how to work with them.

The list of participants is broad and mixed: artists, researchers, architects, farming practitioners and institutions. Among them are FLOW (Agnieszka Brzeżańska and Ewa Ciepielewska), the duo PIOTROWSKA / SZCZĘŚNIAK, Aleksandra Wasilkowska, Wiktor Strumiłło, Sébastien Marot and Carolyn Steel, alongside Bazar Egipska, Spółdzielcza Farma MOST and the Warsaw Wholesale Agri-Food Market „Bronisze”. Communal cooking and eating feature too, treated as part of the basic circulation of urban life. It is worth taking the view the organisers propose - looking at Warsaw through its metabolism: how it feeds itself, how it breathes, how it manages energy and matter. The festival runs from 30 August to 27 September 2026.

Tickets, opening hours, and current details are on the Museum of Modern Art website.

Museum profile: Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej.