I am! human! Why Poland’s LGBTQ+ artists won’t be silenced

Poland today has one of the worst rankings in the EU for LGBTQ+ rights. The conservative Polish government and powerful Polish Catholic Church are openly anti-LGBTQ+ and highly codependent, Poland’s official separation of church and state notwithstanding. But against this backdrop of anti-LGBTQ+ oppression, Poland’s vibrant and extensive artistic community has grown stronger.

Many queer artists make art that reflects their personal experiences as LGBTQ+ citizens, while other artists openly support the LGBTQ+ communities as allies.

This stance has made artists a target for conservative ire. In January 2021, three Polish female artists were put on trial for “offending religious feelings’’ and “desecration” after creating and distributing an image of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa — a Polish Catholic icon — and the infant Jesus she holds, with rainbow halos. The image of the reimagined duo began appearing everywhere: on signs held at pro-LGBTQ+ protests and women’s rights demonstrations, pasted onto public spaces and widely shared across social media.

This trial ended with an acquittal in March. But the “fear of the rainbow” is very real in Poland, Joanna Klass says. She’s the co-founder of Curie City, a cultural centre in Warsaw that works with an array of Polish artists, many of whom are LGBTQ+.

“The government needs an enemy,” she tells me. “It operates through the dissemination of fear.” She’s concerned about how conservatives and the church openly work to shut down any art — like the rainbow Black Madonna — that isn’t aligned with its conservative, Catholic ideology.

Many creatives find that in a country where simply being out as LGBTQ+ can be a radical act, being an outspoken queer artist is difficult in itself.

Multidisciplinary artist Liliana Zeic focuses on themes that are “absolutely political”. Yet she’s finding that fewer institutions — especially those that receive government funding — are open to showcasing these topics. These “self-censoring” institutions, as Zeic puts it, are part of the larger system that seeks to silence and omit LGBTQ+ voices. She doesn’t believe it’s her work that’s gotten more radical, but the state and fundamentalist Catholic organisations “who want me to be afraid, insecure, not to speak up. That’s their goal.”

Yet Zeic — like all the artists I spoke to for this piece — is undeterred. “I know what I want to develop, what to pay attention to, and how to work,” she says. In Sourcebook | Książka źródeł (2020, ongoing} Zeic presents an archive of Poland’s non-normative female queer and lesbian history within the generation of Polish women who fought for electoral rights and women’s equality.

Artist Karol Radziszewski was one of Poland’s first openly out gay artists in the early 2000s. “I grew up in a different world,” he says, with virtually no societal references about what it meant to be gay.

When Radziszewski began to make art at the turn of the 21st century, he was one of Poland’s first artists to pave the way for a LGBTQ+ narrative. In response to a conservative movement that was gaining power, he created a highly visible, fictitious gay gang. In his photo/video series Fag Fighters (2007), the pink balaclava-clad gang wreaks havoc and violence: a parody of what conservatives say they fear, he says.

Radziszewski is now no longer one of the only LGBTQ+ artist on the Polish scene, and his work has become increasingly radical through the years, especially in response to stronger government repression. “My activism is to influence what is in books a decade from now,” he says, “to affect education and thinking”.

Radziszewski established the Queer Archives Institute in 2015, to research, collect, digitise, present, and exhibit Central and Eastern European queer archives. He launched the archive’s website specifically on 15 November to mark the 30th anniversary of the start of Operation Hyacinth, a secret mass operation by Polish communist police to register all Polish homosexuals and those with whom they had contact.

He draws upon research from the institute in his latest art project, a series of acrylic paintings of historical figures paired with little-known facts about their non-heteronormativity. He shares the portraits on Instagram, on which he has a large and attentive following.

The portraits are vividly coloured, with accentuated outlines and loose brushwork. The images feel fresh and of the now, even as they ask the viewer to reconsider their subjects’ history through a different lens. “I’ve realised that I don’t have to take on all the radicalism myself,” Radziszewski says. “Instead, I consciously create space for others to feel empowered and act.”

Nickel now lives in Warsaw, but grew up in a small Polish town of 60,000. When he won the award, his local paper did a write-up. Nickel braced himself for a homophobic backlash that never came. Old friends wrote supportive messages; locals congratulated his mother, who works at one of the town’s shops. Nickel says that the reaction could be because locals know him — “that’s our gay” — but against a political backdrop that fuels hate and fear, it feels like a victory.

“I’m writing my next project,” Nickel says. “It’s about things I myself have experienced. It’s important to tell my story here, in Poland.”

Yet while the cultural sphere may allow LGBTQ+ artists space to breathe, wider policies continue to crack down on their home and family lives. Choosing to stay in Poland is not easy. Same-sex civil unions are illegal in Poland, and in July 2020, President Duda proposed a constitutional amendment that would prohibit same-sex couples from adopting children.

For illustrator and artist Marta Zablocka, who also lives in Warsaw, those policies mean that she cannot legally marry her partner, nor can she legally adopt their two-year-old son. Zablocka’s popular series Zycie Nad Kreske (Life Beyond the Mark) explores the frustration at the government’s words and actions, which directly impact her own life and the lives of those she loves — alongside expressions of love and hope.

“For years, I kept my private life very private,” she told me. “But I began having a lot of emotions around the protests.” She also despaired about how much hate speech was being regularly disseminated in the public sphere. “I began to feel terrified,” she says. “Powerless. The law won’t protect me.”

She began sharing those thoughts and feelings on her social media accounts, and received an outpouring of support, kinship, and love. She realised that sharing herself “wasn’t just about me. I’m not alone.”

As we talk, her partner is getting ready to take their son out to the playground. Zablocka calls him over, and he runs into her arms, all blonde curls and rosy cheeks. They snuggle for a few minutes.

Zablocka is also active and outspoken beyond the screen; she regularly organises community events in her neighbourhood. But she makes sure to invite all of her neighbours — even those who have told her that they voted for Duda.

She recently led a first-of-its-kind community mural project, and invited the entire neighborhood to help paint it. When some neighbours told her they couldn’t draw, she told them to come anyway and that it would mean a lot to her if they showed up, which a number did. Zablocka made sure that everyone was able to participate in some way, and that they understood how much she valued their help.

“I try to see and appreciate everyone as human beings,” she says. “I seek out humanity in others because so many people are suffering. Everyone wants to live with dignity.”