Jura Shust

The first solo exhibition in Poland by Belarusian artist Jura Shust. A multichannel installation - films, sound, performance and objects - about how technology is taking over the role that forests, rituals and spirituality once played in our relationship with nature.

Zachęta on the exhibition:

Resin* Solar Plexus is the first solo exhibition in Poland by Belarusian artist Jura Shust.

It tells a story about the relationship between human spirituality and technology. For the exhibition, the artist prepared a new, multichannel installation consisting of films, sound, performative actions, and objects made from organic and industrial materials, arranged in five rooms at Zachęta. It introduces the viewer to a landscape stretching between a Christmas tree plantation, a cemetery where trees grow from graves, and an ancient Eastern European wilderness. These are places where old ideas about human-nature relationships meet contemporary technologies - from industrial exploitation of the environment to artificial intelligence and digital communication networks.

In this landscape, spruces were once seen as links between the material and spiritual worlds, and the forest functioned as a sacred space. Today, these same areas become a site of geopolitical tensions, surveillance infrastructure, and intensive use of advanced technologies. The artist examines how these technologies take over functions previously attributed to rituals, mythologies, and spiritual practices, and how they change our ways of communicating with the environment and understanding reality.

Jura Shust - a Belarusian artist (born 1983) living in Berlin, who combines politically engaged art with the creation of speculative visions of the future. He is interested in the relationships between spirituality, technology, and biopolitics, as well as the possibilities of resistance against systems of power. His works have been presented in numerous institutions worldwide, including Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst GFZK in Leipzig, Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art S.M.A.K. in Ghent, Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kyiv, Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe, and Management in New York. He participated in the 14th Baltic Triennial at CAC in Vilnius, the 4th Art Encounters Biennial in Timișoara, and the 15th Gwangju Biennale. In Poland, the artist’s work has so far been presented in a group exhibition at Galeria Arsenał in Białystok, and his film Pine Cone Seeds (2022) was acquired in 2025 for the collection of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź. He runs the portal saliva.live, focused on researching the relationship between technology and nature.

Special thanks for supporting the exhibition to: Management, New York; Michael Reznik; Robert Triefus

What to expect

Shust’s new installation fills five rooms at Zachęta and combines films, sound, performative actions, and objects made from organic and industrial materials. It leads you through a landscape stretched between a Christmas tree plantation, a cemetery where trees grow from graves, and an ancient Eastern European forest.

The starting point is the spruce, once seen as a link between the material and spiritual worlds, with the forest treated as sacred space. Shust shows how those same places now become sites of geopolitical tension, surveillance infrastructure, and advanced technology, including artificial intelligence, and how these take over functions that once belonged to ritual and myth. Shust (born 1983) lives in Berlin; his film Pine Cone Seeds (2022) entered the collection of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź in 2025.

Tickets, opening hours, and current details are on Zachęta’s website.

Museum profile: Zachęta.