Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz was attending the opening of the pavilion on Thursday, where Ukrainian artists are exhibiting two video installations named ‘Repeat after me II’.

Filmed in 2022 and 2024, the films feature Ukrainian refugees displaced by the war in their homeland following Russia’s full-scale invasion.

According to the organizers, the films “show war as a collective experience, independent of age, origin, professional, and social status, giving a voice to witnesses and paying attention to the individual experience of the catastrophe.”

Speaking to the Polish Press Agency (PAP) following the opening of the pavilion, Sienkiewicz told PAP that the inclusion of the videos was “a choice of values, both collective and now institutional, of the Polish state. "People are dying next to us; their families are walking on our streets. This murder continues all the time, and on top of all this, our security directly depends on the defense of Ukraine.”

"Therefore, I repeat, entrusting this exhibition to Ukrainian artists is a choice of shared values.”

Organized every two years since 1895, the motto of this year’s Venice Biennale, the 60th installment of the event, is ‘Foreigners are Everywhere.’

Since 1932, Poland has participated in the event.