Warsaw Under Construction. Sovereign and Fed

This year’s Warsaw Under Construction festival at the Museum of Modern Art takes on food sovereignty: where the city gets its food, and what would happen if it started growing more of it closer to home. It is an exhibition about farming inside the city, about the old belt of villages and orchards around Warsaw, and about how a question about food turns into a question about the whole city.

Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej on the exhibition:

The main theme of Warsaw Under Construction 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 is a main element 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 farming - form its structure just like roads, squares, and buildings. Agriculture penetrates 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 cooperate with them.

The festival does not propose a vision of a distant future, but practical answers to the present - a project for a city that feeds itself from regional resources and incorporates 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, PIOTROWSKA / SZCZĘŚNIAK (Sara Piotrowska, Maciej Szczęśniak), 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, 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 a claim the festival makes directly: a sovereign and fed city is one where agriculture belongs to urban planning on the same terms as roads, squares and buildings. Agricultural land, allotment gardens, orchards, home gardens and community farming are treated here as part of the city’s structure rather than its backdrop. A lot of space goes to the idea of the nourishing zone - the ring of farmland stretching roughly 80-100 kilometres out from Warsaw, which supplies crops for the city’s residents.

The second thread is historical. Warsaw is built on fertile soil, and as late as the first half of the 20th century its outskirts were a belt of villages and orchards that fed the centre. Many of those places have vanished under development, but traces remain in street names, allotment gardens, home orchards and the memory of residents. You will also find present-day forms of cultivation: traditional ground crops, greenhouses, hydroponic systems, and mushrooms grown in basements and garages.

The participant list is long and mixed. Alongside artists and researchers (among them FLOW, PIOTROWSKA / SZCZĘŚNIAK, Aleksandra Wasilkowska, Sébastien Marot and Carolyn Steel) there are institutions and organisations from outside the art world: the Bazar Egipska market, the MOST cooperative farm, and the Bronisze wholesale food market. The festival states that it is not offering a vision of a distant future but practical answers to the present, including communal cooking and eating as part of city life.

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

Museum profile: Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej.