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SUMMARY:Anna Barlik: Flags of Non-Existent Countries
UID:https://instytutpolski.pl/newyork/2026/05/04/anna-barlik-flags-of-non-existent-countries/
LOCATION:
DTSTAMP:20260523
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Warsaw:20260523
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Warsaw:20260705
DESCRIPTION:May 23 – July 5, 2026KODA House407b Colonels Row, Governors Island, NY
Saturday, May 23, 2026 at 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM Opening Reception
Saturday, June 20, 2026 at 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM Artist Talk with artist Anna
Barlik and Paula Vilaplana de Miguel, Curatorial Associate at MoMA
Anna Barlik’s solo exhibition, Flags of Non-Existent Countries, presents
a new series of formal compositions that engage and critically reinterpret
the visual codes of nationality. The artist uses the flag — one of the
most recognizable symbols of unity, identity, and political belonging —
as a conceptual starting point to explore these themes. In Barlik’s work,
such order becomes destabilized — colors that are assigned to certain
countries or places become re-ordered, deconstructured, and reconfigured,
creating visual marks, or speculative emblems, for countries that have
never existed. In these works, these colors are changed into softer and
different - less obvious tones. By moving away from their usual forms, the
works ask how symbols gain meaning and power, and encourage viewers to look
again at ideas often seen as fixed or natural.
Barlik is interested in the utopian potential of this gesture. What happens
when we strip a symbol of its official meaning? Is nationality a permanent
category or is it a construct that is subject to constant negotiation? Does
a sense of belonging emerge exclusively from borders and history or is it
built primarily through common values, culture, and experiences we share?
It is exactly the common values and culture that often shape us more
strongly than formal political divides. They are the ones creating
connections, building communities, and influencing the way we understand
ourselves and each other. For the artist, identity is not a solid state. We
define ourselves, re-define ourselves, construct and deconstruct ourselves
in an ongoing process. Similarly to flags in this series, our belonging is
fluid, changeable, and multi-layered.
When entering KODA House, a tulle flag welcomes visitors, referencing the
visual language of national display and civic ritual. Throughout the
exhibition, the presented works form a series of sketches and case studies
exploring flags, systems of belonging, and the symbolic role of color. The
sunroom becomes an installation space with a linear drawing in space. In
the main gallery, steel flag-like sculptures are prominently installed,
including above the fireplace and in the stairway entrance. Constructed
from separate elements and partially disassembled, they appear as if caught
in a moment of transformation. Paper sketches and compositions appear
across the space, emphasizing process and materiality. In the kitchen
gallery, flags rendered as everyday kitchen cloths are present, extending
the exhibition’s vocabulary into the realm of the domestic and the
functional.
Artworks presented at KODA are presented in dialogue with earlier projects
such as DATAMENT, a site-specific installation that represented Poland in
the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Architectural Biennial (2023). DATAMENT
explores how architecture is more and more shaped by data and algorithms.
It questions our trust in systems that promise clear answers, while often
creating distorted or incomplete images of reality. Also, Obstacles, a
series of sculptures addressing adversity and the human ability to confront
it, is presented alongside Flags of Non-Existent Countries. All these
projects, despite formal differences, are connected by an interest in the
relation between an individual and a system — between what is given and
what is possible to transform.
Anna Barlik is an artist-in-residence at KODA in 2026 in the season
entitled Utopia. In this context, she wishes to show that even the simplest
visual means can carry enormous emotional and conceptual weight. Geometric
layout, color, rhythm, or composition, are not neutral forms — they
become carriers of memory, tensions, aspirations, and questions about the
future. This exhibition is an invitation to think about the world not as a
closed map of fixed borders but as a space open to continuous
reimagination.
In 2004, Anna Barlik began her art studies at the Strzemiński Academy of
Fine Arts in Łódź, majoring in jewelry design and graduating cum laude
three years later. Simultaneously, she pursued studies in sculpture at the
Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw from 2005 to 2010. During her time at the
Faculty of Sculpture, Anna received a scholarship to Universität der
Künste in Berlin, which she attended in 2008. After graduating in 2010,
she continued her education by undertaking a Ph.D. at her Warsaw alma mater
while also completing a postgraduate program in urban planning at the
Architecture and Urban Planning Department of Warsaw Technical University.
In 2017, she successfully defended her Ph.D. in art, culminating a
four-year research project focused on spatial concepts in Nordic culture.
In 2025, she obtained her habilitation degree in the arts, and was
subsequently awarded the title of Professor at the Polish-Japanese Academy
of Information Technology (PJATK), where she remains an active member of
the academic community, teaching composition and sculpture.
Anna Barlik’s participation in KODA’s Artist Residency program is
financed, in part, by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage,
Republic of Poland, and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. Artist Talk, with an
invited guest is presented in collaboration with the Polish Cultural
Institute New York. 
Lead image: Anna Barlik, Flags of Non-Existent Countries  (sketches), 2026.
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