The solo exhibition by Belarusian artist Yura Shust, Żywica* Splot słoneczny, has opened at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw.
In this project, the artist explores nature, belief systems and artificial intelligence. The exhibition features video projections, sound installations and objects made from organic and industrial materials.
Shust is interested in ancient beliefs associated with trees and forests in Belarus, Eastern Europe and the Baltic region, where different traditions, languages and worldviews have coexisted for centuries. His work draws on ethnobotanical and ethnoreligious research and examines traces of animism that have survived in folk culture.
In particular, he explores ancient ideas of the forest as a sacred place and of trees as intermediaries between the human and spiritual worlds. At the same time, he shows how forests have become sites of technological development, from industrial exploitation to the testing of monitoring and surveillance systems.
Curator Michalina Sablik, who led a tour of the exhibition, said the artist seeks to reveal how people once pursued a spiritual connection with nature and how technology is transforming those relationships today. New technologies allow us to explore ever more deeply what lies beyond the limits of our direct perception. They also allow us to dream of eternal life beyond the body.
The artist sought to create a space that engages several senses simultaneously, including sight, hearing and smell. He hopes visitors will feel as though they have entered a parallel dimension.
“People have always sought different forms of intense, extreme experiences,” the artist says in one interview. “I believe art can create such states and invite us to imagine an alternative future.”
The exhibition’s visual narrative revolves around a tree. Visitors walk through the circular gallery from room to room, tracing a path from the top of a spruce tree to its felled trunk. The central installation, A Spruce Planted Beside the House, features an actual 15-metre spruce, a tree that carries particular symbolism in the East European landscape.
The spruce served as an intermediary between the spiritual and material worlds. It was used in ancient rituals and planted in cemeteries. According to the artist, the work tells the story of a transition from participation in a living, spiritual world to its appropriation and subordination to human needs.
In other works, the artist compares tree roots with the human nervous system. The solar plexus, the network of nerves in the abdominal cavity, serves as a symbol of the connection between the human body and natural systems. Several panels in the exhibition, created using epoxy resin, are devoted to these metamorphoses.
The exhibition’s primary material, however, is natural tree resin. Historically, it was used in medicine and burial rituals. Its Belarusian name is related to the word for “life”. Over time, resin transforms into amber, preserving time as though it becomes an eternal material.
The installation that gives the exhibition its title consists of severed roots coated in resin. The work paradoxically resembles both an industrial process and a ritual of worshipping sacred roots. It also reflects interconnectedness: recent scientific research suggests that trees form communities capable of supporting one another.
At the exhibition opening, Belarusian migrants in Poland presented a group performance titled *Birds With Human Heads*, whose digitally transformed echo accompanies the exhibition.
Yura Shust’s Żywica* Splot słoneczny exhibition will run until September 27.