The Odwrażliwianie (Desensitization) exhibition by artist Karolina Grzywnowicz opened on Friday at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in the Polish capital.
It examines how the senses can become instruments of political control and how people respond to violence and trauma.
At its center is an unusual installation developed with Dr. Pamela Dalton of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.
The Polish artist worked with the US-based researcher to recreate what she calls the "scent of the journey," associated with migrants who spent days or weeks hiding in the Białowieża Forest after repeated attempts to cross into Poland a few years ago.
"The smell is a mixture of cortisol, the dampness of the forest and wet clothes that refugees have no chance to dry or wash," said exhibition curator Katarzyna Kołodziej-Podsiadło.
The recreated scent is contained in glass vessels produced in the southern Polish city of Krosno. These are mounted on moss-covered boulders brought from the forest, where migrants and asylum seekers faced threats such as exposure and exhaustion.
An accompanying film documents an experiment in which a tracking dog is first trained to recognize the scent, then rewarded for ignoring it.
The process, known as desensitization, also has applications in treating human trauma, where controlled exposure to distressing stimuli can gradually reduce an individual's response.
The exhibition draws a parallel between this psychological process and the risk of public indifference to suffering.
In 2021, the forested frontier between Poland and Belarus became the scene of a prolonged humanitarian crisis, with migrants caught between border enforcement measures, repeated pushbacks and dangerous environmental conditions.
This happened after the Belarusian authorities began facilitating illegal migration from the Middle East and Africa as a means of putting pressure on Poland and the broader European Union.
Today the border is protected by a steel fence and an electronic surveillance system of cameras and sensors that support border guards and the military in monitoring the frontier.
Polish Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński said in June that there were no successful illegal crossings of the Polish-Belarusian border in the first quarter of 2026.
Other works in the exhibition include thermal-camera footage from the forest, showing temperatures falling to nearly freezing at night.
The exhibition was developed with advice from the Ocalenie Foundation, which provided humanitarian and legal assistance at the border after the crisis began.
Grzywnowicz often works with smell, sight and sound as central to her installations and artistic interventions. She also examines how people resist oppression through basic physical and sensory experiences.
Her 2021 work Bedtime explores the experiences of Palestinian mothers singing lullabies against the sounds of bombing and Israeli aircraft.
In Combat Breathing (2025), she examines the use of improvised masks to survive tear gas attacks during protests in Myanmar, Venezuela and the West Bank.
Curated by Kołodziej-Podsiadło and designed by Julia Cieślak, Desensitization runs at Zachęta until January 10.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP