Gdańsk has never had just one story, and CONFLUENCE is currently turning that complexity into an immersive encounter with art, history and identity.
After exhibitions in Venice, Orléans, Lviv, Toruń and Gdańsk, the project is now being presented in the city from which its idea originates. From 2 July to 25 October 2026, CONFLUENCE is taking place inside the historic Main Town Hall, where contemporary art meets one of Gdańsk's most recognisable architectural settings.
The exhibition brings together UV light, sound, monumental architecture and a large-scale installation made from original cubes by Jacek Kornacki. Rather than presenting a conventional historical narrative, the project uses the exhibition space to ask questions about how people and cities construct meaning.
The central subject of this edition is Gdańsk itself: a city whose history has been shaped by the meeting of cultures, languages, religions and ideas.
A city understood as a confluence
The title is significant. "Confluence" describes the meeting of different flows, and the exhibition uses that idea as a way of looking at Gdańsk.
Across its history, the city has been connected with different communities and cultural influences, including Vikings, Dutch, Germans, Kashubians and Poles. Contemporary Gdańsk continues to change as new communities become part of the city's social fabric.
METAMISTIC does not attempt to establish one definitive version of that history. Instead, it asks what is placed at the centre of collective memory and what is left further towards its edges.
The questions are deliberately broad: what shapes people more, ideas or biology? History or the future? Heritage or choice?
For a city with such a layered past, these questions move the exhibition beyond a straightforward presentation of historical facts. They ask visitors to consider how the stories inherited from the past interact with the choices being made in the present.
The Museum of Gdańsk describes the exhibition as an invitation to find one's own answers, rather than follow a single interpretation of the city's identity.
From physical objects to a wider artistic system
METAMISTIC is the work of Prof. Jacek Kornacki and Prof. Maciej Śmietański. The two artists have collaborated on projects for many years, combining Kornacki's visual art practice with Śmietański's medical knowledge and interest in bio-art. Their METAMISTIC project began in 2022 and has since developed through exhibitions, performances, films, meetings and lectures.
At the centre of the project are Kornacki's cubes. Their individual symbols can be arranged into larger compositions, allowing the installation to change according to how the elements are combined.
The project's thinking extends beyond the physical exhibition. METAMISTIC also incorporates a digital platform through which users can create their own compositions from the same visual elements. Its creators draw an analogy with DNA, using the universal biological code as inspiration for thinking about how artistic meaning can be recorded, rearranged and carried forward.
That connection between biology and artistic expression helps explain one of the exhibition's central questions. If DNA provides a fundamental code for living organisms, could symbols and meanings also be organised into a system capable of describing aspects of human experience?
CONFLUENCE does not provide a simple answer. Instead, it places visitors inside an environment where light, sound, architecture and objects interact, encouraging them to consider their own relationship with memory and identity.
History that remains open to interpretation
The choice of Gdańsk as the subject of this edition gives the project a particularly fitting setting. The Main Town Hall itself is part of the city's accumulated history, while the exhibition introduces a contemporary visual language into its historic interiors.
The result is not an attempt to separate the past from the present. Instead, the architecture becomes part of the conversation as the exhibition continues to welcome visitors.
For Gdańsk, the exhibition's significance lies in that tension. A city can inherit histories without being permanently defined by them. Communities change, new experiences are added and old symbols can acquire different meanings.
CONFLUENCE therefore approaches identity as something continually constructed rather than something fixed. Its questions about heritage, choice, memory and change apply not only to Gdańsk, but also to the people who live in and experience the city today.
In that sense, the exhibition's "confluence" is not simply about the meeting of cultures in Gdańsk's past. It is also about the continuing meeting of different ideas about what the city has been, what it is now and what it might become.
As CONFLUENCE remains open through 25 October 2026, each visitor becomes part of that ongoing exchange, bringing their own memories, interpretations and questions into the space.
Visitor Information
Exhibition: CONFLUENCE
Venue: Main Town Hall, Gdańsk, ul. Długa 46/47
Dates: 2 July–25 October 2026
Status: Currently open to visitors
Authors: Prof. Jacek Kornacki and Prof. Maciej Śmietański
Project: METAMISTIC / RAISE GROUP
