No Justice, No PiS: The arts and politics in Poland since 2015

This month, Juliet talks to authors Ewa Majewska and Kuba Szreder about how Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS) intervened in art and culture following their election victory in December 2015, and what’s changed since Donald Tusk became Prime Minister on a pro-EU, centrist platform in 2023. They discuss PiS’s takeover of state television, appointment of numerous sympathisers within institutions such as Warsaw’s influential Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, and their manipulation of Poland’s complex 20th century history, culminating in the choice of conservative artist Ignacy Czwartos to represent Poland at the Venice Biennale in 2024. They also talk about the protests against PiS’s anti-abortion laws and ‘LGBT-free zones’, Donald Tusk’s efforts to reverse some of these changes, and how left-wing cultural workers can respond to this depressingly familiar dynamic between the centre and the right.