The exhibition "La memoria finalmente. Arte in Polonia: 1989-2015", which features the works of around 15 Polish artists chosen from three generations of artists born between the end of the 1950s and the first half of the 1980s, is staged at the Palazzina dei Giardini Ducali in Modena from 19 March to 5 June. The exhibition itinerary will include photographs, paintings, collages, performances, sculptures, drawings, installations and videos, telling of the delicate passage from past to future as experienced by Poland.

The exhibition is organised and produced by the Galleria civica di Modena together with the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena and staged in collaboration with the Polish Institute of Rome, curated by Marinella Paderni.

As already announced elsewhere, the event, previously set to be staged this year, will now be held in 2016 in an agreement between the City Council and the Polish Institute of Rome, together with the curator, and with the approval of the lenders of the works in question and of Polish institutions, following on from the collaboration undertaken with the Galleria Civica. This initiative will also provide the opportunity to take a close look at what has been happening on the Polish cultural scene, 25 years since the country gained its democratic independence.

Poland, the cradle of an unprecedented cultural revival, split throughout the course of the 20th century, after returning independent and then freed with the help of the Red Army, became a historical and strategic crossroads between East and West, and a key observatory of European political and cultural phenomena, often providing the stage for the contrasts between the two extremes of our continent, at its own expense. The start of the post-socialist era and the emergence of capitalism have marked a cultural watershed between past and future. The country’s re-found freedom represents the promise of the future without the fear of falling foul of the removal of past events and the loss of memory.