{"id":578568,"date":"2026-09-19T12:08:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T09:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=578568"},"modified":"2026-09-19T12:44:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T09:44:15","slug":"once-everything-becomes-clear-to-me-i-leave-artist-aliaksandr-adamau-on-an-unwanted-sanatorium-and-his-exhibition-in-warsaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/once-everything-becomes-clear-to-me-i-leave-artist-aliaksandr-adamau-on-an-unwanted-sanatorium-and-his-exhibition-in-warsaw","title":{"rendered":"\u201cOnce Everything Becomes Clear To Me, I Leave\u201d: Artist Aliaksandr Adamau On An Unwanted Sanatorium And His Exhibition In Warsaw"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A solo exhibition<\/a> by Belarusian artist Aliaksandr (Alexander) Adamau<\/strong>, hyperMother. Shared Breathing, has opened at the Museum of Free Belarus in Warsaw. It is part of the Warsaw Gallery Weekend program and continues the hyperMother project, which the artist has been working on for several years.<\/p>\n

In the new exhibition, Adamau has assembled in the museum hall a fragment of a fictional institution resembling a sanatorium, with a waiting room, special lighting, sound, vibrations and its own procedures. Its purpose seems straightforward \u2014 to take care of an exhausted person and temporarily free them from the need to monitor their own condition.<\/p>\n

But the more functions the system takes upon itself, the harder it becomes to determine when care turns into control.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the opening, reform.news spoke with Aliaksandr Adamau about why the idea behind hyperMother did not end with a single exhibition, where the name came from and why the artist turns a gallery into a fragment of a nonexistent institution.<\/p>\n

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A fragment of Aliaksandr Adamau’s exhibition. Photo: Viktoryia Adamava<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Question Remains Unanswered<\/h2>\n

According to Adamau, hyperMother was not originally conceived as a large-scale series. The artist arrived at it through several separate experiments over the past few years, in which similar themes kept recurring.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main task I set myself as an artist is to have an experiment that remains incomprehensible to me at every stage. If it remains incomprehensible, but I feel that there is something there, I go there. When everything becomes clear to me, when I feel that I have answered the question, I lose interest, and I leave,\u201d<\/i> Adamau says.<\/p>\n

When the artist looked back at his work of the past five years, it became clear that several of his projects had in one way or another revolved around the same issue: care and hyper-care, supervision and control, and whether it is possible to distinguish one from the other at all.<\/p>\n

These themes were later brought together under the name hyperMother.<\/p>\n

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A fragment of Aliaksandr Adamau’s exhibition. Photo: Viktoryia Adamava<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Name Itself Emerged More By Chance<\/h2>\n

\u201cExactly a year ago, I was walking my dog and came up with the phrase \u2018hyperrealistic mother.\u2019 I said it to myself and realized: it sounds mega-cool. I am generally a fan of mega-cool names and words,\u201d<\/i> the artist says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

At first, it was simply the title of an exhibition. But for Adamau, the combination of the two words proved more meaningful than a single project.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is \u2018mother,\u2019 \u2018mama\u2019 \u2014 one of the very first and most popular words. And there is hyper \u2014 something that keeps slipping into everything connected with technology and the digital world. As if they were two massive blocks: one very internal and soft, the other cold and modern.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cAt the same time, both are all-encompassing, just in different ways.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

The first exhibition was titled HYPERREALISTIC MOTHER. It opened in December 2025 at Galeria Szczur in Pozna\u0144.<\/p>\n

The centerpiece of that exhibition was a children’s interrogation room \u2014 a specially designed space where conversations with children are supposed to take place in the safest and calmest possible atmosphere, while observation and recording are carried out at the same time.<\/p>\n

The artist worked with the contrast between the soft interior and its function of control. The space included objects from the \u201cNon-Toys\u201d series, as well as pepper spray with a teardrop-shaped keychain featuring an image of the Virgin Mary and other objects.<\/p>\n

After the exhibition, it became clear that the theme was not over.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized: okay, this doesn’t end with the exhibition. I’m interested in seeing how it continues to exist, how it is refracted through my other ideas. I realized that this story is definitely a long one.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

The word \u201crealistic\u201d was subsequently dropped from the name.<\/p>\n

\u201cI shortened the term and created hyperMother as an institution. For now, it is being built through exhibition projects. But I don’t know, perhaps one day it will be built as something real and permanent.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

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A fragment of Aliaksandr Adamau’s exhibition. Photo: Viktoryia Adamava<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rooms That \u201cGet Stuck\u201d In Galleries<\/h2>\n

In Shared Breathing, Adamau continues not so much the previous exhibition as the very logic of hyperMother.<\/p>\n

While in Pozna\u0144 visitors entered a children’s interrogation room, in Warsaw they will find themselves in another part of the institution. It can be imagined as the foyer, hall or waiting room of a sanatorium.<\/p>\n

For the artist, it is important that the exhibition is created directly within the Museum’s space; he does not try to disguise it as a neutral white room.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to work more with spaces. This will not be an exhibition in the sense of a white cube, where I bring objects, put them, excuse me, on a pedestal or hang and illuminate them. For me, the white cube is already an outdated idea of a neutral context. There is no neutral context.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adamau says he has also grown tired of the distance between the viewer and the art object itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want objects to encounter objects, for there to be a network and connection between them, so that this veil of untouchability falls away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of his works can be touched. Others are better left untouched.<\/p>\n

The artist gives the example of real gas cylinders that he uses in his works: the gas inside them is also real.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you press it, you can actually get gas in your own eyes or someone else’s. I do not hide the fact that some things are dangerous, because that is life. I don’t want the exhibition space to differ too much from real life.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

At the Museum of Free Belarus, the artist is working with a room of about 100 square meters, with high ceilings and the architecture of the historic building itself.<\/p>\n

At the same time, he does not want to completely rebuild the space.<\/p>\n

Instead, the project introduces a principle that Adamau calls \u201cgetting stuck\u201d: rooms from the fictional hyperMother institution seemingly accidentally enter real museums and galleries and temporarily remain there.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we talk about the children’s interrogation room, last year it got stuck in Pozna\u0144, this year it is getting stuck in S\u0142upsk. And in our case, the waiting room \u2014 something between a hall and a foyer \u2014 has gotten stuck in the Museum of Free Belarus.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

For Adamau, this kind of \u201cgetting stuck\u201d makes it possible to avoid building a complete set.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does not require me to create a total arrangement, but it opens up the possibility of reassembling fragments of this nonexistent foyer, the foyer of a sanatorium or its hall.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Aliaksandr Adamau, \u201cPanopticon.\u201d Photo: Viktoryia Adamava<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Shared Breathing<\/h2>\n

In the Warsaw exhibition, hyperMother already looks like an institution with its own branches.<\/p>\n

One of them deals with \u201cshared breathing\u201d \u2014 Shared Breathing.<\/p>\n

According to the project description, sound and vibrations are used here as a calibration tool, while breathing sets the common rhythm.<\/p>\n

The procedure is not called treatment. Its purpose is to stabilize a person’s condition and reduce excessive tension.<\/p>\n

In this world, people are encouraged not to work on themselves even more, but, on the contrary, to temporarily stop doing so.<\/p>\n

The system itself knows when to slow down. It determines the appropriate rhythm itself and offers rest itself.<\/p>\n

This is where the question explored by the project comes from: what happens when a system created for human comfort begins to decide for itself what is good for a person?<\/p>\n

There will be no single central work in the room around which everything else is arranged.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will enter the space and see a fragment of some institution called hyperMother, or rather, its branch dealing with Shared Breathing. We will be able to stay there, interact with the objects, experience specially calibrated healing light and read images. I want a person to feel as if they are at the beginning of the construction of some very, very large institution.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Adamau describes the future space as cozy, although coziness in hyperMother always remains somewhat suspicious.<\/p>\n

Still, he reminds us that above all, he is making an exhibition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is something to look at, something to listen to, something to read.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

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Performance \u201cInitial Calibration.\u201d Zuza Szczepa\u0144ska. Photo: Viktoryia Adamava<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Performance<\/h2>\n

The exhibition opened with the performance \u201cInitial Calibration,\u201d structured as a parallel reading of three books, each of which offers its own model for responding to what is happening around us: the Polish Poradnik bezpiecze\u0144stwa structures a response to external threats, Szcz\u0119\u015bcia mo\u017cna si\u0119 nauczy\u0107 suggests turning to self-control and inner balance, while a guide to painless accompaniment becomes the most radical form of withdrawal from reality.<\/p>\n

Performer Zuza Szczepa\u0144ska<\/strong> works successively with these three registers, appearing at times as a visitor and at others as a hypothetical employee of the institution, creating a space for shared meanings between the different texts. The audience is not required to do anything: visitors can come and leave, skip part of the reading or not stay at all. Thus, incomplete presence, loss of information and a fragmented perception of what is happening also become part of the performance.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The exhibition will run until October 4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A solo exhibition by Belarusian artist Aliaksandr (Alexander) Adamau, hyperMother. Shared Breathing, has opened at the Museum of Free Belarus in Warsaw. It is part of the Warsaw Gallery Weekend program and continues the hyperMother project, which the artist has been working on for several years. In the new exhibition, Adamau has assembled in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":578567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/6aae59738f1f1.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"\u201cOnce Everything Becomes Clear To Me, I Leave\u201d: Artist Aliaksandr Adamau On An Unwanted Sanatorium And His Exhibition In Warsaw"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142375,142339,142338],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-578568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-main","category-news"],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":578572,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578568\/revisions\/578572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}