Kinga Nowak. A tropikal fiva uv regrejt

The Krakow painter and sculptor Kinga Nowak has a solo show at Bunkier Sztuki, but not the rooms to herself. Her work is shown alongside folk art, archive material and pieces by Władysław Hasior. It runs from 23 September 2026 to 3 January 2027, and a ticket costs 11 PLN, or 5 PLN on Tuesdays.

Bunkier Sztuki on the exhibition:

In autumn 2026, Bunkier Sztuki will present a solo exhibition by Kinga Nowak, one of the most compelling figures in contemporary Polish painting and sculpture. A tropikal fiva uv regrejt, curated by Ania Batko, offers a critical reflection on the entanglements of modernity, colonialism, and the enduring fascination with the “exotic”, while simultaneously proposing a decolonial re-reading of European visual culture.

The exhibition takes Kinga Nowak’s paintings and sculptures as its point of departure, placing them in dialogue with examples of folk art, objects historically classified as “primitive” and archival materials. Among the featured works will be pieces by Władysław Hasior, Edward Sutor, and Leokadia Płonkowa.

What to expect

Do not come expecting a painting retrospective. This is a show built on juxtaposition: Nowak’s work is the starting point, and around it stand the kinds of objects Europe spent decades labelling “primitive”. So expect an argument made through comparisons rather than a walk through a career. The gallery publishes no count of works or rooms.

What to look out for:

• “Curtain after Jean Genet” - a monumental textile that the gallery calls one of the show’s central elements, inspired by Genet’s play “The Blacks” (Les Nègres).
• “Ship” - an oil painting by Nowak from 2026, 150 by 110 cm. The gallery uses a detail of it as the show’s image, though it does not say outright that the painting itself is on display.
• Works by Władysław Hasior, Edward Sutor and Leokadia Płonkowa - three artists whose pieces the gallery sets beside Nowak’s.
• Folk art from Krakow and Zakopane collections - according to the local news site LoveKraków.pl, some of the objects are on loan from the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow and the Tatra Museum in Zakopane.

The show is to be accompanied by the launch of the catalogue “Painter in the Museum: Kinga Nowak”, the first substantial book on her work. It is co-published by Bunkier Sztuki, the Znaki Czasu Centre of Contemporary Art and Aspekty Gallery. The gallery has not yet published a price.

Context

Kinga Nowak was born in Krakow in 1977. She graduated in painting from the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts in 2001 and also studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Since 2023 she has run a painting studio at the Krakow academy. Her paintings were included in the 2014 survey book “100 Painters of Tomorrow”, and since 2015 she has run the artist-led space Widna with Michał Bratko, who also designed the catalogue.

The subject goes back a long way for her. She grew up in Olkusz, a small town north-west of Krakow, next door to its museum of African art, and has been drawn to non-European art ever since, as she told LoveKraków.pl before the opening.

The Polish title is misspelt on purpose, and so is the English one. It mimics the phonetic spelling of the Polish Futurists, who printed their 1921 broadsheet “Nuż w bżuhu” (“A Knife in the Belly”) that way. The gallery names two sources for the title: a Futurist broadsheet called “Subtropical Evening Organised by White Negroes” and “Tristes Tropiques”, Claude Lévi-Strauss’s 1955 account of his anthropological travels in Brazil.

Tickets and time

Regular 11 PLN, reduced 6 PLN, 5 PLN on Tuesdays - per exhibition, not for the building. A family ticket costs 20 PLN, and a special 2 PLN ticket covers, among others, children under 7, art and art-history students, and disabled visitors. The price list has no free-entry day, so Tuesday is the cheap one.

Bunkier opens three shows on 23 September, each with its own ticket. The combined ticket with the neighbouring Palace of Art costs 32 PLN (20 PLN reduced, 70 PLN family), covers every show running in both galleries and is valid for three days.

The combined ticket pays off if you want all three new shows on regular tickets (33 PLN separately), except on Tuesdays, when all three cost 15 PLN, or if you want to add the Palace of Art. For two shows, two single tickets are cheaper (22 PLN), and on reduced or family tickets single tickets are cheaper even for all three (18 PLN and 60 PLN).

If you think you will come back, a return ticket for one exhibition costs 15 PLN, or 10 PLN reduced.

Open Tuesday to Sunday, 11:00-19:00 (11 AM-7 PM), last entry 30 minutes before closing; closed on Mondays. During the run it is closed on 1 November and 24-26 December, and open until 15:00 on 31 December; it is open on 11 November. The gallery has not yet published its holiday hours for January 2027, so check its website around New Year. Holders of the Karta Krakowska (the city residents’ card) get 20% off, Large Family Card holders 60%.

Allow an hour: the show works through comparisons and archive material, and both need reading time. Best for anyone interested in the Polish avant-garde, folk art and Hasior, or in how Europe looked at the “exotic”. Skip it if you want a straightforward painting show by one artist: here Nowak’s work is one voice among several.

English on site: the gallery publishes an English page for the exhibition but does not say whether labels are bilingual. A guided tour in a foreign language costs 170 PLN plus tickets (130 PLN in Polish).

What the press says

LoveKraków.pl (22 Sep 2026, Filip Zapał): a report on the gallery’s autumn programme. It says some folk objects were borrowed from the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow and the Tatra Museum, and that the show fulfils a wish rooted in the artist’s Olkusz childhood - link (Polish-language source). Curator Ania Batko: the show is about “how avant-garde art drew on primitivism, and about Poland’s ties to colonialism, a country that never had colonies but always wanted them” (our translation).

SZUM (5 Jan 2026, editorial team): the Polish art magazine’s New Year round-up of the most interesting exhibitions of 2026 listed this show in Bunkier’s programme. It described the show as combining painting, sculpture and objects inspired by primitivism - link (Polish-language source).

Magiczny Kraków (10 Sep 2026, updated 23 Sep 2026, City Media Office): the city’s official site presents the show as a critical look at Europe’s fascination with cultures it considered exotic - link (Polish-language source).

So far these are previews and one pre-opening report; no reviews yet.

Updates

• 23 Sep 2026 - page created on the opening day; dates, prices and hours checked against Bunkier Sztuki’s own pages.

See also

• Polish Design. Biography of an Object / Biography of a Designer - the second show Bunkier opens the same day, until 13 December; it is in the same building, so both fit easily into one visit.
• Mirella von Chrupek. Romance au chocolat - the third new show in the same building, chocolate dioramas on the mezzanine; a lighter subject for the same visit.
• Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum - Krakow’s folk culture collection in Kazimierz, which according to LoveKraków.pl lent some of the objects shown at Bunkier.
• Paths of Blacks Enter the White Land - at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw until 10 January 2027; a related subject, Poland’s relations with Africa and Blackness in the communist era.

Tickets, opening hours, and current details are on the Bunkier Sztuki website .

Museum profile: Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery .