The exhibition will explore intercultural relationships across past, present, and future perspectives, while simultaneously interpreting the central theme of Malta Biennale 2026 – CLEAN | CLEAR | CUT – which refers to ideas of repair, connection, and purification.

The OmenaArt Foundation project highlights the significance of the Polish and Ghanaian contemporary art scene. Through its presence at the Malta Biennale – an important global artistic platform – it strengthens intercultural dialogue and promotes the rich textile traditions of Poland and Ghana

Redefining. Polish-Ghanaian Textile Narratives is an attempt to reclaim the memory of one of the lesser-known yet highly significant episodes of the 20th century – the collaboration between Poland and Ghana in the 1960s, during the global wave of decolonization and intense geopolitical shifts. It was a bold and unusual gesture: a newly independent African state and a Central-Eastern European country functioning within the realities of the Eastern Bloc undertook an experimental attempt to build relations based on partnership, education, and mutual support.

This relationship was neither a colonial project nor a purely transactional one. Its potential was grounded in a belief in the possibility of solidarity beyond divisions, as well as in values close to the philosophy of ubuntu, that is, the conviction that an individual exists through community and that development is a collective process. The fact that this cooperation faded before it could fully develop leaves space today not so much for nostalgia as for imagination.

The exhibition is both a tribute to and a symbolic emphasis of that moment – an attempt to restore it to contemporary circulation of thought. It does not focus on geopolitical analysis, although it touches upon history and politics. At its center are bonds, relationships, and the question of a lost – or perhaps only suspended – opportunity to build an intercontinental community.

The project unfolds through the meeting of three artists from Poland and Ghana who had not known one another before. Their first shared experience was a workshop with children at the Ghanaian Kids Haven School, where the youngest participants built textile models of houses, with façades and interiors, with everyday life on both sides. This gesture, simple yet profound, became a metaphor for the entire project: getting to know oneself through the other and discovering one’s identity in relation to an unfamiliar culture.

The artists then traveled to Malta, an island located between Europe and Africa that for centuries has been a space where influences intersect. Its geographical and symbolic position adds another dimension to the project: Malta becomes not only a site of presentation but a real bridge between continents.

The process: conversations, collaborative work, and exchange of experiences, was as important as its result: three monumental textile installations created specifically for the pavilion space. The medium of textile, deeply rooted in the traditions of Ghana, Poland, and Malta, becomes here a language of dialogue. Fabric is a weave; individual threads remain fragile, but when interlaced, they create a structure capable of carrying the weight of memory and meaning. It is also a medium with strong roots in women’s craft, for centuries marginalized, private, and domestic,  in the 20th century began to break boundaries between applied and fine art.