2025
modular installation

Vitalii Shupliak’s installation is a spatial reflection inspired by Stanisław Lem’s novel Solaris. It explores the impossibility of understanding and communicating with the Other, as well as the struggle with memory and with images of the past that permeate the present. The artist creates his structure from modular, serrated elements – open and mutable, suspended between order and chaos, much like human memory itself. The mirrored surface of the work reflects light, creating glimmers and flickers that fill the surrounding space. In this way, viewers become part of the installation, which transforms with their movement. Shupliak investigates how a mirror can not only reflect but also return the gaze – linking the visible with the hidden, the present with the past.

In the context of the Aniołki district’s history, the installation functions as a vessel of memory. Situated on Wronia Góra – a site where anti-aircraft guns were stationed during the Second World War – it does not recreate the past but allows it to resonate here and now, prompting reflection on current conflicts and the presence of an aggressor in our immediate neighbourhood. Sensitive to light and movement, it invites viewers to pause, to empathise, and to be together in a shared space. For the artist, it is also a way to show that memory – like light on a mirrored surface – is never constant. It shifts with us, reflecting our experiences and allowing us to see more than what first meets the eye.

VITALII SHUPLIAK is a visual artist from Ukraine who studied art in Ukraine, Poland and Germany. He creates video installations and also works in painting and performance. Employing methods that traverse both real and virtual worlds, he investigates the potential of free expression in the creation of new values. His particular focus is on issues of migration, identity and borders. Shupliak’s works have been exhibited at KINDL and the ZAK Centre for Contemporary Art in Berlin, the Yermilov Centre in Kharkiv, MOCAK in Kraków, the Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdańsk, the MACAN Museum in Jakarta and the National Museum in Poznań. He lives and works in Berlin.