Everyone Under Control | Exhibition of the 3rd Drawing Studio of the Academy of Art in Szczecin and the Art in Social Space Studio of UAP

Everyone Under Control | Exhibition of the 3rd Drawing Studio of the Academy of Art in Szczecin and the Art in Social Space Studio of UAP

Venue: Duża Scena Gallery UAP, 24 Wodna Str.
Opening: 12 March 2026, 6:00 PM
Exhibition: 12 March – 5 April 2026

The gallery is open Wednesday to Sunday, 2:00 – 5:00 PM

Artists:
Zofia Błotnicka, Radosław Hada-Jasikowski, Wiktoria Korneluk, Kseniya Krashaninikava, Mykyta Kruhliak, Iga Kwas, Lena Kwiatkowska, Damian Malendowski, Sofiia Mazaniuk, Angelika Nowacka, Olivia Smith, Wiktoria Staszak, Frania Sutryk, Gabriela Swędrowska, Lidia Tomaszewska, Piotr Tołkacz, Karolina Zięciak

Curatorial supervision:
Wojciech Dada, Rafał Jakubowicz, Klaudia Prabucka, Barbara Stańko-Jurczyńska

They say it is for our own good.
That the camera above the entrance, the algorithm in our phones, the register in the cloud – all of it is meant to protect us. Security has become a contemporary incantation, spoken quietly yet effectively. Under its cover, an infrastructure of observation expands – discreet, omnipresent, almost transparent.

The exhibition Everyone Under Control intertwines the voices of students from the 3rd Drawing Studio of the Academy of Art in Szczecin and the Art in Social Space Studio of the Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts Poznan. It forms another chapter in their ongoing dialogue about visibility, about the body in public space, and about the boundaries between what is shared and what is intimate and private.

The title, taken from Damian Malendowski’s poster featuring a camera motif, does not sound like poetry; it sounds like a notification, like a sentence appearing on a system screen: “Everyone under control.” The camera, a symbol of surveillance, evokes the logic of the panopticon – a world in which coercion is no longer necessary, because the mere awareness of being watched is enough. The possibility of observation itself causes us to correct our own gestures.

Contemporary surveillance rarely wears the face of tyranny; more often it takes the form of care. It protects against threats, optimizes movement, anticipates crises. Data is collected in the name of stability, profiling in the name of convenience. Within this narrative, privacy becomes a currency exchanged for a sense of security – the greater the fear, the easier the consent.

The works presented here, however, do not illustrate this situation directly. Instead, they interrupt it. In drawings, objects, installations, and actions, tension emerges between exposure and withdrawal, between the desire to be seen and the need for shelter. The artists explore how deeply the gaze of others has penetrated us. Are we still able to distinguish what we do for ourselves from what we perform for an invisible observer?

Within the exhibition space, control ceases to be merely an instrument of power; it becomes a subject, a material, a language. The systemic eye is reversed – rather than supervising unilaterally, it becomes the object of analysis. The camera loses the certainty of its position, and vision slows down.

Security, which promises peace, produces a paradox: the more safeguards there are, the less trust remains; the more light there is, the more shadow appears. In this fissure – between protection and control – the works of young artists emerge.

We want to be seen, yet at the same time we long to disappear. We reveal ourselves only to conceal ourselves again moments later. Their gestures are sometimes subtle, sometimes decisive, yet always aware of the system that watches.

Everyone Under Control is a space in which the viewer cannot remain neutral. Entering it means becoming part of the circulation of gazes. And perhaps here, in the experience of shared visibility, the most important question arises: is security without freedom still security, or merely an elegantly packaged form of fear?