SHELTERS, COVERS, SLITS – art about safety, community and survival

In mid-November, two former shelters located beneath the surface of Wrocław’s Plac Grunwaldzki housing estate, usually closed to the public, opened their doors to visitors. For three days, they hosted an exhibition organised by the Wrocław Institute of Culture, entitled “SHELTERS, COVERS, SLITS – It’s somewhere further away. Don’t worry. Now closer, even closer” by Yuriy Biley.

The event was organised by the Wrocław Institute of Culture as part of the international Magic Carpets project. The exhibition was curated by Paulina Brelińska-Garsztka, Brigita Bareikytė, Ana Gabelaia and Linda Krumina. The project focused on the artistic interventions of Yuriy Biley, a Ukrainian artist based in Wrocław, whose work explores themes of migration and displacement. 

The main part of the exhibition took place in a former shelter beneath a tenement house on Maria Skłodowska-Curie Street, where the artist lives. Biley proposed adapting the space for practical use – combining technical requirements with a concern for sharing resources and creating a communal refuge in times of danger. The project was developed in collaboration with experts and documented in a film co-created with Piotr Blajerski. The two remaining locations, the remains of shelter infrastructure in Kacprzak Park and the shelter under the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Piastów Śląskich Medical University at 5 Bartla Street, introduced viewers to the obscure geography of hidden places in the city.

The title refers to three types of shelter – shelters, hiding places and crevices – while the lines borrowed from Antoni Smoliński’s poem Alarm, “It’s somewhere further away, don’t worry. And now closer, even closer,” encourage attentiveness to the situations that surround us.

Biley’s new exhibition reflects on current social and political realities while also presenting works created during his ten years in Poland. His practice, rooted in personal experience, draws on borrowings and quotations to create installations, video works, collages and post-artistic forms.

“This autumn, with Yuriy Biley’s exhibition, we were venturing out into the city for the first time in the history of Magic Carpets. I am delighted that, as an urban cultural institution, we had the opportunity to host an event addressing such an important and timely theme,” says Dominika Kawalerowicz, Director of the Wrocław Institute of Culture.

Magic Carpets is an international network of artist residencies bringing together 17 organisations from across Europe and is co-funded by the European Union’s “Creative Europe” program. Its aim is to support emerging artists and curators while engaging local communities in the city’s cultural life. The Wrocław Institute of Culture has been part of the platform since 2022. In Lithuania co-funded by Lithuanian Culture Institute.

The exhibition was open to visitors from 14 to 16 November. Three locations normally inaccessible, located beneath Grunwaldzki Square, were explored by more than 1,300 visitors during three days of the exposition.