WARSAW.- Entitled Liquid Tongues, the project submitted by curators Ewa Chomicka and Jolanta Woszczenko, has been chosen for the Polish Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, 2026. Created by Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski, with the participation of Choir in Motion (Chór w Ruchu), the project was selected by the Polish Pavilion competition jury and accepted by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.  

Bogna Burska is an acclaimed Polish visual artist and playwright whose work has been widely presented in major institutions in Poland and internationally. Daniel Kotowski is a prominent artist and performer known for his innovative explorations into Deaf experience and language, with exhibitions across leading European art centres. 

Liquid Tongues is an audio-video installation in which the Choir in Motion (Chór w Ruchu), a group of both hearing and Deaf performers, interprets whale communication codes and songs, both in spoken English and International Sign (IS). The project explores alternative modes of communication, inspired by more-than-human life. The axis of this story will be tales of loss and reconstruction – from the rebirth of whale cultures to contemporary attempts to restore marginalised languages and narratives of communication systems. 

The installation will operate on many levels: image (cinematography by Magda Mosiewicz and Bogna Burska), sound (composed by Aleksandra Gryka) and physical experience, through the acoustic waves corresponding to impressions of vocalisations and echolocations by right whales. The collective choreography of the bodies of the choir is inspired by the movement of schools of fish (Alicja Czyczel). 

Liquid Tongues conveys the concept of Deaf Gain, in which deafness is not seen as a disability, but a separate culture and identity, offering new perspectives and forms of expression. The team of the pavilion creates a significant amount of audio and video underwater – an environment where Deaf people can freely communicate with sign language, while hearing people make distorted sounds. The boundary between air and water is a space for communication experiments – a mirror of sorts, where different languages, bodies and ways of sensing intersect.

In the curatorial concept for Biennale 2026, based on the musical metaphor of ‘minor keys’, Koyo Kouoh extends an invitation to encounter what is delicate and generally overlooked contemplatively – the softer voices, neglected narratives, micro-memories. She encourages us to develop subtle forms of resistance, to create new relationships, sensitive experiments, to build polyphonic scores of mutually listening, feeling, and resonating societies. Liquid Tongues develops this idea: attempting to break through what we imagine to be the limits of communication and to create subjective communities, taking various perspectives into account. This proposed version of the future considers an animal perspective as well. 

Zachęta — National Gallery of Art is the producer of Liquid Tongues. It has been the organizer of Polish exhibitions at both Biennale Arte and Biennale Architettura in Venice and, for more than seventy years, has also been the caretaker of the Polish Pavilion. The projects representing Poland at both biennales are selected in a two-stage, open competition by a jury of experts in the fields of art and architecture.