Piotr Wysocki and Dominik Yalowinski held a painting and sculpting workshop at the Guarded Centre for Aliens in Bialystok, where only men are detained. The artists invited refugees of different nationalities to take part in the workshop, many of the refugees staying at the centre come from the former Soviet Union. The title Refugee Jam describes not only a situation of creating together. The word 'jam', depending on the context, can also mean trouble, crowding, smuggling or incapacitation. On the one hand, the artists alluded to the motif of the road, while on the other, they immobilised the cargo by depriving it of its wheels. In doing so, they referred to the situation of the people confined in the centre, emphasising their powerlessness, their helplessness, their state of limbo. A monitor was integrated into the body of the car, displaying a recording of the event filmed on a street in the Warsaw district of Praga. A car belonging to Chechens was set on fire there.

Piotr Wysocki

Piotr Wysocki is the author of films, video installations, performances and paintings. He is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (2008). He creates film portraits exploring the psychological and social condition of his protagonists. He treats his work about excluded people with extraordinary social sensitivity, understanding and humility towards the situations he records. He has been exhibiting in Poland since 2005. He is the winner of the Samsung Art Master competition (2008) and the ninth Geppert competition in Wrocław (2009). He was also nominated for the "Polityka" Passport Award, and in 2011 - for the "Views" award of the Deutsche Bank Foundation.