“New Religious Expression” from the Church to the Factory – No Turning Back

Abstract

This paper concerns the exhibition titled „In Our Image, In Our Likeness: Polish Religious Expression In The 1980s” (Polish: „Na obraz i podobieństwo. Polska ekspresja religijna lat osiemdziesiątych”), organised by Andrzej Bonarski in spring of 1989 at the Norblin Factory in Warsaw. This author studied the exhibition against the background of the post-industrial location that was unusual to prior practice of art exhibition. To reconstruct the essential facts, source materials were used from the personal archives of Maryla Sitkowska, one of the organizers of the exhibition at the Norblin Factory, along with texts written by historians of art, art critics, and researchers in other fields that concerned the exhibition and Polish sacral art. The exhibition was compared to other events held at the Norblin Factory and similar art curatorship efforts in the 1980s to demonstrate that „religious expression” was handled not unlike other trends in art of those years, by providing it with a display venue outside of a typical state-owned white cube. An analysis of the reception of  religious art in post-industrial settings demonstrated that modern artists have increasing difficulties in satisfying the needs of art patrons from the Church and return with their artistic work to the temples.