Transposition is an interdisciplinary exhibition dedicated to the lived experiences, memories, and cultural presence of the transgender community in Warsaw. Unfolding across personal testimonies, archival documents, and contemporary artworks, the project creates a polyphonic narrative of trans existence — one that is layered, fragmentary, intimate, and collectively resonant. It invites viewers into a space where queer memory is not simply recovered, but reimagined, embodied, and politicized.
Conceived and curated by Simona Kasprowicz, with conceptual and research contributions by Alina Synakiewicz and Emilia Wiśniewska, and visual identity by Kuba Tschierse, Transposition emerged from a long-term effort to gather, amplify, and preserve trans voices in the face of erasure. Working closely with archives such as Lambda Warsaw and the Trans-Fuzja Foundation, as well as private collections and grassroots oral histories, the curatorial team developed a project rooted in care, listening, and creative engagement.
The exhibition, presented at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Warsaw (5 December 2024 – 9 January 2025), brings together a multigenerational constellation of trans and queer artists — including Aljas, Edyta Baker, Sylvia Baudelaire, Olo CBD, Dellfina Dellert, Alicja Długołęcka, Sam Dryja-Zabielskie, Hugo Gruszczyński, Leon Narcyz Kamiński, Nina Kuta, N.N., Stasiek Niziołek, Tamara Pieńko, Pamela Porwen, Cyprian Rubeńczyk, Tea Tomaszewicz, Bożna Wydrowska, Lava XXX, Marta Zelent, Alina Synakiewicz, Emilia Wiśniewska, and Simona Kasprowicz. Their works — spanning video, photography, text, painting, and performance — are presented in direct dialogue with historical materials: photos, flyers, VHS recordings, personal letters, zines, and sound archives that document the everyday, the joyful, and the resistant.
At the center of Transposition lies the intention to create a narrative for the community — not just about it. The exhibition is an open invitation to explore trans genealogies, to witness the language shifts and political transformations that have shaped trans life in Poland, and to affirm a sense of collective continuity. Voices from in-depth interviews conducted during the research phase — including Leo Dragon, Eva Filimonava, Misia Joachim, Danu Meduziewicz, Maciej Misiorny, Anna Puchała, Pepe Le Puke, Elliot Ruiz Vidales, Ida S., Ewa Werda, J. Szpilka, Zenobia Żaczek, Róża Majewska, and others — echo through the space, offering layered, unfiltered portraits of trans subjectivity and survival. Archival footage from past Miss Trans contests, community meetups, and early activist gatherings coexist with newly produced works, creating temporal bridges between past and present.
The opening night, titled Curatorial Narrative, featured performative actions by Atef Amri, Biyaya, Neo Mosa, Harpy Queen, Dana Vitkovska, and Bożna Wydrowska, expanding the exhibition’s themes through embodied, ephemeral gestures of trans resistance and celebration. These performances responded not only to the artworks but also to the space itself, turning the forum into a living, pulsing trans archive.
Transposition addresses the cultural, social, and political invisibility of transgender people — past and present — while rejecting the demand for linear, singular stories. Instead, it offers a complex, fractured, and beautiful map of what trans life has been and continues to be: joyful, angry, erotic, mourning, mundane, ecstatic, communal. The exhibition centers those who are often excluded from dominant historical narratives and asks: What happens when we place trans experiences not at the periphery, but at the core of cultural memory?
More than an exhibition, Transposition is an evolving proposition — a call to remember, to imagine, and to insist on the enduring presence and future of trans lives, desires, and worlds.
Fuck the Cis-tem
installation, 2024
Fuck the Cis-tem is a three-part installation presented as part of the Transposition exhibition — a fierce, intimate, and unapologetically trans-feminist statement composed of video, painting, and sound. Each of its elements — the film Body/City of Desperation, the painting AVE I, and the sound piece AVE Manifesto — stands as an autonomous artwork, yet together they form a raw, affective landscape of queer rage, survival, and defiance.
This work does not seek reconciliation. It resists assimilation, comfort, and respectability. Instead, it confronts the viewer with a queer and trans body rendered hyper-visible, marked by trauma, memory, and protest — a body that refuses to disappear.
Body/City of Desperation is a performative video that embodies the fractured experience of a nonbinary trans person navigating violence, desire, and the persistent burden of being perceived. Intercut with glitch aesthetics, raw textures, and bodily repetition, the piece explores how identity is constructed, exposed, and fragmented by societal pressure. The body here is not a symbol — it is a battlefield and a prayer.
AVE I, a painting created from a still image of the performance AVE, channels the aesthetics of martyrdom, religious iconography, and drag excess. The body drips with scarlet brocade, haloed in glitching light, suspended between camp and agony. Referencing both Christian imagery and pop culture icons, AVE I reclaims the aesthetics of sacrifice, offering a queer vision of redemption that does not require forgiveness.
Completing the installation, the AVE Manifesto resounds from speakers like a ritual incantation — an angry, poetic declaration against exclusion, erasure, and the weaponization of normativity. Written and performed in the first person, the text lists those systematically pushed to the margins of culture and asserts: “There is no culture without us.” It is a cry, a refusal, and a reminder that queer and trans voices are not decorative — they are foundational.
Together, these three works form a polyphonic installation that confronts systems of gendered control — the cis-tem — while carving out a space for queer mourning, resistance, and collective reimagining. Fuck the Cis-tem is not just a title; it is an artistic strategy. A refusal. A gesture of survival made flesh, image, and voice.