SOLIDARITY AS A FUTURE

Solidarity as a Future is an exhibition project that, through a carefully selected group of works from the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje’s most significant European collections, asks: What remains after an act of solidarity, and how does its meaning change over time?

The museum’s French collection was established in the immediate aftermath of the 1963 Skopje earthquake. Following the disaster, French writer and critic Jean Cassou appealed to artists to donate works to Skopje. Through the efforts of the museum’s first director, Boris Petkovski, a direct connection was established with the Parisian art scene, then one of the centres of European and world art.

The exhibition places particular emphasis on the fact that the French collection is not strictly “national.” In the years after the Second World War, Paris was an international artistic environment where artists from different countries, cultures, and traditions came together. This diversity makes the museum’s collection a testament to another vision of Europe: one shaped by movement, exchange, diversity, and cultural openness. An act of international solidarity thus became a lasting cultural legacy and one of the foundations of the museum’s international collection.

The exhibition will present a selection of works by French and international artists associated with the French art scene, creating a dialogue between past and present. The featured artists include Victor Vasarely, Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages, Anna-Eva Bergman, Dimitar Pandilov, Nikola Martinoski, Borko Lazeski, Bruno Talpo, Vladimir Veličković, Petar Lubarda, Justino Alvez, Aleksandar Trižuljak, Vladislav Frič, Yannis Mihas, Francesco Somaini, and others. Their works form part of the museum’s French—and, more broadly, European—collection and attest to its distinctly international character.

The selection is intended as an opportunity to read the collection in a new way, rather than as a conventional historical survey. The works will be arranged around several key questions: How does a collection born of solidarity remember history? Can art bear witness to a collective act? What does solidarity mean today? And what can we build upon it?

The project revisits a defining moment in the history of Skopje and the Museum of Contemporary Art while asking how the legacy of solidarity can become an active value today – and the foundation for a more open, diverse, and compassionate shared future.

The exhibition is organized in cooperation with the French Institute and the “European Dialogues: Legacies and European Future” program, which took place from September 29 to October 2, 2026, https://ifs.mk/dialogues-europeens

Cover image: Piotr Kowalski, With a Little Displacement of the Head, 1974, silkscreen on paper, 56,5 x 90cm, collection of prints, Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje.