Exhibition The Clinic of Collective Representations reflects on the ways communities are built through care, empathy, and mutual understanding. Bringing together diverse human experiences, the featured artworks invite audiences to see the world through the eyes of others and to consider what binds us together across our differences.
The Clinic of Collective Representations is an attempt to examine the shared representations that determine our perception of the world and our understanding of others. They are formed through archetypes conveyed by stories, images and symbols in the broadest sense, all of which circulate within culture. Through them, we develop a sense of community and learn to interpret reality. Yet these same archetypes can also reduce others to simplistic categories, reinforce exclusion and perpetuate inequality.
The exhibition takes as its starting point a catalogue of selected social perceptions – and stereotypes – concerning individuals and groups particularly vulnerable to stigmatisation: older people, neurodivergent people, those who have experienced mental health crises, people with disabilities, migrants and members of minority communities. The works explore, among other issues, how deeply ingrained assumptions and conceptual frameworks affect everyday relationships, shape language and institutional practices.
Fairy tales, myths and folk stories provided an important point of reference in developing the exhibition. Over the centuries, these narratives have shaped shared interpretative codes and reinforced particular social roles. The Clinic of Collective Representations approaches them as living structures of meaning, continually revised and transformed. In this way, the exhibition invites reflection on how communities are constituted, whom they include or exclude, and what representations of humanity we wish to pass on to future generations.
Wejście do budynku, fot. Małgorzata Kujda
