KAZ_LAB 2026 | THE GATE

01.07–05.07.2026

KAZ_LAB is an art and research laboratory as well as a series of audiovisual events dedicated to the Kazimierz district in Krakow. We explore the history, culture, and unique character of this place through art. This year, our multimedia projects will illuminate the façade of the remarkable historic High Synagogue on Józefa Street, while inside the 2 Okna Cafe gallery visitors can view paintings, photographs, graphic works, and objects. This year’s edition of KAZ_LAB, as an accompanying event of the Jewish Culture Festival, refers to the main theme – THE GATE, which we interpret and read in various ways, both in the context of the history and the present day of Kazimierz.

The exhibition is available inside the gallery and in the courtyard of 2 Okna Cafe daily throughout the festival: 01.07–05.07.2026.

The projection can be viewed from outside the High Synagogue building daily throughout the festival: 01.07–05.07.2026, from 21:00 to 24:00.

Participants:
Sebastian Bożek, Agnieszka Dutka, Piotr Filipiuk, Agnieszka Łukaszewska, Anna Pichura, Jakub Pierzchała, Aleksandra Rodobolska-Dudek, Sebastian Wywiórski, Małgorzata Łuczyna & Jacek Złoczowski [Memorymorph].

WORKS AT THE 2 OKNA CAFE GALLERY:

Agnieszka Dutka | Apparent Correspondence of Proportions, 2026

The project Apparent Correspondence of Proportions centres on an accidentally discovered connection between an old window frame from my Archive of Things and the windows of the High Synagogue. This connection, initially intuited, was borne out during research conducted in the synagogue for the purposes of the exhibition. The fleeting observation of a correspondence of proportions was documented in a photograph in which the old window frame gives the impression of being a fragment of the synagogue’s enormous window. The accidentally discovered relation is the result of a particular convergence of spatial and temporal circumstances. With the earlier subdivision of the synagogue windows, visible in a photograph from the 1930s, this relation could not have arisen.

Agnieszka Łukaszewska | MOST [BRIDGE], 2026

The series of drawings and the object reference the history of the Kraków districts of Kazimierz and Podgórze. On July 4, 1915, Juliusz Leo – Mayor of the Royal Capital City of Kraków and Franciszek Maryewski Mayor of the Free Royal City of Podgórze, ceremonially united the two cities, Podgórze and Kraków, on the Krakus Bridge (now the Powstancow Slaskich Bridge). The bridge of the title represents a metaphorical connection between the two urban areas and the lives of the people within them – a foundation for the city’s functioning today.

Kuba Pierzchała | Bakh, 2026

Bakh (Yiddish: “stream”) explores the motif of water as a space of transition and constant flow. A digitally manipulated projection of a stream, installed in an entrance hall – a space that is itself a threshold – invites the viewer to pause before a symbolic gateway between what is visible and what remains hidden. The water does not lead to a specific place; instead, it becomes an experience of memory, movement, and transformation.

Jacek Złoczowski i Małgorzata Łuczyna [Memorymorph] | bRAMA, 2026

A series of graphic works directly inspired by observation, documentation, and analysis of the contemporary architectural fabric of Kazimierz. The graphics were created out of admiration for form and an attempt at photographic documentation of gates, portals, entrances, doors, and wickets. The gate is treated here as an element of the city’s visual structure.

Sebastian Wywiórski | Notion 3, 4, 2025

Two paintings from a series of works centered on water. The paintings refer to its symbolic meaning as a carrier of memory, life, and transformation, as well as to the water’s surface as a mirror that reflects the reality unfolding around it.

Sebastian Wywiórski | Principle of Uncertainty_5. High Synagogue, Kraków, 2026

The Principle of Uncertainty series consists of ephemeral light installations created in natural environments and within the urban architectural landscape. These works take the form of temporary, site-specific interventions, aiming to provide an analytical insight into the existing yet gradually disappearing structure of selected fragments of reality. The series functions as an open-ended process, in which each installation becomes another link in a chain of light events shaped by the specific place, time, and existing conditions.
Installation, light projection. Components: BeamZ RGB 250 spotlight mounted on a tripod; 220 V power supply; 250 W LED, equivalent light output of approximately 1500–2000 W. A beam of intense light isolates a small fragment of the courtyard at the High Synagogue in Kraków. The light intervention is intended to take place during the exhibition opening.

MULTIMEDIA PROJECTS | videomapping, facade of the High Synagogue

Sebastian Bożek | Topography of Meanings, 2026

The project examines the mental map of Kraków’s Kazimierz as a space of tradition and transformation. The city is interpreted as a text – a layered system of signs, where the documented structure and architecture of the district intersect with its subjective perception. The video presents a layered projection of these cognitive processes. It asks how the city communicates with its inhabitants through codes and signs, and how its mental image shapes the contemporary identity of the place.

Piotr Filipiuk | Cracks, 2026

A project exploring the gaps in the memory of a place, treating each street and courtyard as a threshold to a different timeline. Rather than reconstructing history, the project uses the symbol of the gate as a framework for a visual exploration of Kazimierz. It is through this gate that we look at the district’s uneven and chaotic layers.

Anna Pichura | Earth Opens and Closes. Flowers Keep Growing, 2026

Video based on documentation of garden plants, self-seeded plants, and weeds growing in Kazimierz, Kraków. Here, urban vegetation becomes a record of layered histories – a trace of gentrification, the district’s changing social fabric, and the ongoing transformation of its urban landscape. Spontaneously growing plants, abandoned gardens left behind by former residents, and species introduced through the expansion of gastronomy and tourism together form a living archive of the area, where nature and human activity remain in constant dialogue. The subtle, intermittent trembling of the image evokes a motif found across many cultural traditions: the earth opening up to swallow people and entire cities. In the local legend of the Jewish wedding on Szeroka Street, the earth becomes an instrument of punishment for transgressing the moral order. In other narratives, however, it assumes a protective role, concealing what is threatened with destruction.

Sania Rodobolska-Dudek | The Great, 2026

Kazimierz* the Great – great, literally. We stand in Kazimierz and look at Kazimierz. Kazimierz looks at Kazimierz – and finds it full of guests: he returns to the city that bears his name, a city that now lives without him. But a king remains a king; he still wants something, still reaches for something – and that desire carries him beyond the window, further than he meant to go. Most people today picture him as a stately portrait or a statue: we know him less as flesh and blood than as his image, fixed and smoothed by memory. The work looks for him somewhere between these states – between body and recollection, between presence and its dispersal. The windows become a gate into the deeper layers of time – toward the oldest stratum of this place, the one from which everything here began.
* In English, the king is known as Casimir III the Great; the Kraków district he founded keeps its Polish name, Kazimierz. In Polish, they are one word – and the language bends it through cases, so that the man and the place keep changing places inside the same sentence.

Jacek Złoczowski i Małgorzata Łuczyna [Memorymorph] | Gateway, 2026

Gateway is a multimedia project dedicated to the theme of historical, no longer existing gates leading to the Kazimierz district. Today, traces of former fortifications can be found in the topography of the streets; the artistic interpretation will allow the real structure of the city to be related to its immaterial, repressed layer of memory. We treat the motif of the gate as a figure of passage – between the visible and the invisible, presence and absence, history and its echo. The project is situated at the intersection of cartography, the archaeology of imagination, and site-specific practices, reconstructing not so much form as the experience of passage.

Event concept and organization:
Małgorzata Łuczyna & Jacek Złoczowski [Memorymorph]

Funding and technical support:
Instytut Sztuki i Designu i Wydział Sztuki
Uniwersytet Komisji Edukacji Narodowej w Krakowie
Ośrodek Form Filmowych

Partnerships:
Festiwal Kultury Żydowskiej
Gmina Wyznaniowa Żydowska w Krakowie
2 Okna Cafe