Titled Fauna: Animals in War and Their Keepers, the show invites visitors to consider how animals were used, perceived and treated during times of conflict and how these relationships can shed light on human nature itself.
The aim is to "introduce the multifaceted motif of animals into historical narrative," the organisers say.
The exhibition, they explain, is not only intended to raise awareness about the fate of animals and to foster respect for the natural world, but also "to encourage critical reflection on human—including one's own—attitudes toward animals.”
More than 60 pieces are on display, ranging from museum artefacts to contemporary artworks and private collections.
Among the featured artists are major figures, as well as young artists working in painting, sculpture, mixed media and graphic arts, including Zdzisław Beksiński, Szybalsky, Łukasz Surowiec, Kinga Burek and Paweł Sasin.
These works are juxtaposed in striking ways—including pairings such as Szybalsky with Beksiński, and Italian writer Curzio Malaparte with Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet Wisława Szymborska—to prompt new cultural dialogues.
The exhibition explores the complex relationships between humans and animals, and asks whether understanding the animal might help us better understand ourselves.
"The way humans treat fauna reveals their attitude toward themselves, their potential for good and evil, and their vision of reality," say the curators Monika Krzencessa-Ropiak and Marek Zambrzycki.
'War of all against all'
The narrative focuses largely on World War II and the years leading up to it, but the curators also aim to build "a kind of bridge to the present."
They note that modern reality often resembles a kind of "war of all against all"—and that one of the defining questions of our time is how we view animals.
"Historically, humans have seen animals as mindless beings, incapable of feeling—as if they lacked the most vital part of the body: the head."
The motif of the head becomes the central symbol of the exhibition. As the seat of thought, feeling and individuality, it is both a shared feature between humans and animals, and a symbol of their difference.
Head-related objects form the sculptural core of the exhibition, including works by Beksiński and Szybalsky, plaster models by Sasin, and the preserved head of a bull named Geeltje’s Adema.
War's voiceless victims
The curators stress that their mission is to speak on behalf of war’s voiceless victims.
"We aim to restore memory to the unheroic heroes of history—the weakest, the almost mute," they say. "This includes children, the mentally ill or disabled—and, often overlooked, animals."
Fauna: Animals in War and Their Keepers is on view at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk until December 30.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP, gdansk.pl