“POOR BUT SEXY” takes its title from the long-lasting phrase former Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit coined. Initially designed to rebrand post-Wall Berlin as a uncooked, seductive vacation spot for the West—outlined by its low-cost labor and huge infrastructure—the slogan additionally serves as an emblem of how, from a pro-Western perspective, the destiny of the East after 1989 was framed and offered. However right here is extra: the phrase displays the continuing polarisation between East and West, as described in Poor However Attractive: Tradition Clashes in Europe East and West by Polish writer Agata Pyzik (2014, Zer0 Books). Pyzik’s guide delves into the “hidden” historical past of the East, analyzing its complicated and infrequently submissive relationship with the West—one thing that cultural operators from Japanese European middle-class backgrounds possible internalise. From creative practices to subcultures, from post-punk to Bowie’s fascination with the Japanese Bloc, from orientalism to self-colonization, Pyzik’s work rejects nostalgia for the “good outdated days” and the aspiration to change into a “regular” a part of Europe.
Ranging from this provocation, “POOR BUT SEXY” brings collectively works by Nikita Kadan (1982, Ukraine), Dominika Olszowy (1988, Poland), Mila Panić (1991, Bosnia and Herzegovina), Ala Savashevich (1989, Belarus), Anastasia Sosunova (1993, Lithuania) and Miroslav Tichý (1926–2011, Czech Republic). Spanning generations, creative languages, and geographies, the exhibition features as a time capsule—a glimpse into the residing archive of fractured and indirect current we inhabit. Every work engages intimately with the others, occupying a shared area the place experiences, genealogies, and micro-histories intersect.
The group present opens with Dominika Olszowy, whose work combines reality and fiction right into a ‘nightmarish’ imaginative and prescient of actuality. Remaining Push introduces a transgender physique with sneakers crammed with espresso—a recurring motif in her follow that represents each every day rituals and capitalist acceleration. Balancing roughness, humor, and feminist critique, Olszowy’s work embodies a spirit of surreal emancipation.
The exploration of the physique continues within the melancholic pole-dance erotica of Anastasia Sosunova’s Preyer video, which integrates surveillance footage with performative motion in a perpetual loop of self-constructed illustration. Its playful but sensual undertones create an immersive soundtrack for the whole exhibition.
In dialogue with it is a piece from the Refigured sequence, which explores the legacy of underground print practices by reimagining iconographies from Soviet propaganda, LGBTQ+ publications, private archives and social media. Impressed by Lithuania’s secret printing home ‘ab’, which operated from 1980 to 1990 in Kaunas, these works mirror on resistance, id, and the ability of picture dissemination below the stress of political censorship.
Ala Savashevich engages with the politics of self-objectification in her work Pose. Place. Method., exploring how the selection of a pose can decide acceptance or rejection inside social expectations. Symbolic imagery—similar to excessive heels constituted of a Soviet star—highlights the enduring legacy of previous ideologies in shaping current realities.
Miroslav Tichý’s voyeuristic drawings, which seize girls by means of the male gaze, present a contrasting perspective on the feminine physique and mirror on the ability dynamics of wanting. In a broader sense, Tichý’s creative follow, formed by isolation and deliberate lack of institutional assist, displays the broader neglect of Japanese European artists within the world artwork system, the place their analysis was typically neglected or confined to outsiders circles.
Increasing the exploration of id, Mila Panić’s Südost Paket shifts the main focus to things as vessels of reminiscence. That includes Bosnian cash hidden in a tire, the work captures the microcosm of lengthy bus journeys between her residence nation and Germany. These on a regular basis objects function markers of id and folklore, reflecting the duality of migration—worry, smuggling, and anxiousness alongside pleasure, pleasure, and solidarity.
The exhibition concludes with Nikita Kadan’s Dream Flags sequence, by which he repurposes steel panels destroyed by missiles in Ukraine into flags, accompanied by transcriptions of goals recorded in Kyiv in the course of the lengthy nights of shelling. These objects query whether or not artwork can bear witness to battle crimes or function a file of collective struggling, appearing as a strong reminder of the continuing battle and its profound impression on the East-West relations.
Bringing collectively a spread of views, “POOR BUT SEXY” navigates historical past, reminiscence, and id. It reimagines belonging not as a hard and fast state, however as a dynamic, shifting perspective. By the intertwining of private and political tales with surreal overtones, the exhibition unveils a uncooked visible language that celebrates DIY ways and imperfection. Playful but critical, poor however attractive, it triggers a dialog that unfolds throughout time and area, sparking a dialogue between our bodies, objects, fantasies, and goals.
—Sergey Kandsedal
at eastcontemporary, Milan
till April 12, 2025
