Primary Forms 2024/2025

What is Primary Forms project? 

Primary Forms is a cyclical program for pupils at Polish primary schools. It has been carried out by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Roman Czernecki Educational Foundation since 2021. In each edition of the program a new set of artistic instructions, games, scores and objects are created and delivered to schools packed in specially designed boxes. These are used at the schools as a base for creation of artworks, art activities and exhibitions. The works are not necessarily tangible; a range of performances, concerts and happenings have been executed during the first few editions. So far, editions of Primary Forms have been spread out across Poland, but mainly in towns with a population below 30,000. In 2024 the program was also part of the Thailand Biennale. Primary Forms was included in a project executed by the Filipino artist Poklong Anading at a school library in Chiang Rai, Thailand.

Inspirations and Historical References 

Primary Forms was inspired by the School Prints program launched in the UK immediately after the Second World War, during the turbulent times of forging a new political and social order in Europe. An identical set of lithographs by a group of well-known artists were distributed to primary schools and displayed in classrooms. In the scheme, new works were created by artists such as Barbara Jones, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, John Nash and Pablo Picasso. The Primary Forms program also alludes to numerous other experiments connected with art and education in the 20th and 21st centuries. One point of reference is Marcel Duchamp and his travelling “museum in a suitcase,” or “Fluxkits ”—boxes prepared by artists affiliated with the Fluxus movement, containing scores, models, audio recordings, games, puzzles and stencils. Another example is Pure Consciousness, a series of exhibitions begun at preschools in 1998 of works by the Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara. In the educational context and in the company of children, Kawara’s paintings were used as a teaching instrument helping children learn numbers and the days of the week. Primary Forms is also inspired by the exercises and methodologies of artists who worked in schools or established their own educational institutions, such as Joseph Beuys, Cornelius Cardew, Jef Geys, Anna Halprin, Oskar Hansen, Asger Jorn, K.G. Subramanyan, and many others.

The School as Exhibition, Children as Creators

The boxes distributed to the schools contain within themselves a “dormant exhibition,” which can be materialized in the form chosen by the pupils. The activities in the program play out in the rhythm of the school year. Teachers, with the support of museum educators, work with teams of pupils from grades 4 through 8. The essence of the process is to place agency in the children’s hands and for them to learn from one another within the creative activity. The group has time for experiments, asking questions, stretching their imagination, and testing themselves in new roles (for the teachers as well). The teachers involved in the program take part in training, workshops and plein-air sessions, to prepare them for work in the project—to familiarize them with contemporary, conceptual art based on process, actions and relationships, not only on creating objects, so that they can integrate these activities into their future work as teachers.

What Can an Exhibition Be? 

The exhibitions which are the fruits of the teams’ efforts are created within school spaces—in classrooms and corridors, in the gymnasium or the playground. They can be performed numerous times and interpreted in various ways, much like playing a musical score. Through the Primary Forms program, we pose questions like: What can we do with art? What can be an exhibition? Where and when does an exhibition start and end? What can we learn from artists? Does contact with art give rise to knowledge? How to understand art—and also enjoy not understanding it?

About the 2024/2025 Exhibition 

The 2024/2025 school year is special for the Primary Forms program. Previously, the artworks collected in boxes designed for this purpose (in 2021/2022 by Michał Sikorski and in 2023 by Maciej Siuda) were delivered to the schools, so that the school was treated like a museum. Now we are reversing directions—the works created by the children, and the children themselves, are heading to the “big box” of the new MSN Warsaw building. Now, the museum is becoming a school. In October 2024, during the opening week for the MSN Warsaw building, Primary Forms occupied part of the museum space, as a venue for workshops and meetings, as a distribution center for artistic instructions, a reading room and exhibition gallery. It was the first exhibition ever held in the new building! In June 2025 Primary Forms is returning to the museum for an exhibition of the artistic instructions commissioned for the 4th edition of the program, and executions of the instructions by school teams from 14 different towns. The main issue for the 2024/2025 school year is the institution of the museum itself. Together we pose a series of questions about places where artworks can dwell. How does a museum resemble a school? Who distinguishes between art and non-art, and how? How to recognize the “museum value” of objects? Who does art belong to? Is it bad if we don’t understand something? What, and who, is art for?

Three New Works: Tiravanija, Camnitzer, Šedá 

Rirkrit Tiravanija: Relationships Instead of Objects

The exhibition is based around three new artworks. The first was created by Rirkrit Tiravanija (born 1961), a Thai conceptual artist and leading figure in “relational aesthetics.” His art plays out between people, relying on making different things together, shifting our focus from the objects in the museum to relations and situations. Tiravanija’s works are reminiscent of a culinary recipe (indeed he is an avid cook himself): the works are shared with different people and modified to suit individual needs and tastes. The brief instruction provided by Rirkrit Tiravanija—Just Smile and Don’t Talk—can be treated like advice for life, a joke, or a simple exercise in mindfulness and patience. It also alludes to Western ideas about “ordered” Asian culture and discipline. Tiravanija suggests that we can remain silent because that is our nature, but also stubbornly conceal a secret while smiling meaningfully. You can also, as they say, smile at your own thoughts.

Luis Camnitzer: Art as Education

The second work is by Luis Camnitzer (born 1937), a conceptual artist and an art theorist, educator and critic who is engaged in the links between art and education. He has devoted many years of his life to reforming art education in Latin America. As he says, “Art is education, not property, and knowledge belongs to everyone.” Camnitzer often uses text to encourage action and questioning of the existing order. The set of instructions Museum Quality may be used as an exercise to be performed or as a point of departure for a discussion. It can be used to imagine two different models of the museum: one that is resistant to change and governed by a rigid set of rules, and the open museum, where processes and joint activity are key. He hints at how to find “museum quality” in the museum, at school, and anywhere that we can make art. 

Kateřina Šedá: The Spirit of the School

The third work in this year’s edition of Primary Forms is by Kateřina Šedá (born 1977), a Czech conceptual artist and creator of happenings and projects carried out in conjunction with various communities. She makes objects and organizes artistic events in the form of games and festivals. In her projects, she engages family members, neighbors, and people who have never been to a museum. The set of instructions School Spirit encourages the users to evoke and portray the spirit of the building. A person has a soul, while a place has a spirit. Not a ghost haunting the place, but its own special atmosphere, which is hard to put into words. The spirit of a place is composed of many elements: the function of the space, the presence of people, the scent, colors, and light. Šedá encourages responses to the questions: Can you draw a sound or a smell? Can you draw an emotion that is found deep in our hearts? How to set a “trap” to capture a spirit? What is it that makes us feel good in a certain space? 

The Collection as an Educational Tool

Primary Forms is being presented this year for the first time in relation to the MSN Warsaw collection. Three works from the collection were selected for use as “instructional aids” and an element of the scenery of the exhibition: Jumps into the Water by Jarosław Fliciński, Harrisburg Module by Tobias Putrih, and Mother Tongues and Father Throats by the collective Slavs and Tatars. The museum collection becomes a tool for acquiring knowledge and learning various languages: the language of abstraction, the language of space, and the language of cultural diversity.

Artists who have contributed to the program so far

Artists taking part in the Primary Forms program to date: Paweł Althamer, Poklong Anading, Tarek Atoui, Maximiliane Baumgartner, Alicja Bielawska, Kasper Bosmans, Katia Buchatska, Gabo Camnitzer, Luis Camnitzer, Adriano Costa, Alicja Czyczel, Jarosław Fliciński, Dora García, Veronika Hapchenko, Edith Karlson, Sharon Lockhart, Goshka Macuga, Krzysztof Maniak, Mikołaj Moskal, Ramona Nagabczyńska, Ahmet Öğüt, Prabhakar Pachpute, Joanna Piotrowska & Bożka Rydlewska, Olivia Plender, Agnieszka Polska, Laure Prouvost, Katarzyna Przezwańska, Raqs Media Collective, Kateřina Šedá, Maciej Siuda, Slavs & Tatars and Olga Micińska, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Jaśmina Wójcik, and the Zakole collective.