I Like…
I like to return to places I have been before
Beneath that balcony full of climbing roses
I like to return to the places I know
To the memories left there
To see myself in them, to find myself in them…
Wojciech Młynarski

This exhibition is a story born from the need to return—from nostalgia, from memories of a time ruled by carefree joy, openness to the world, and a hunger for experiences—the time of childhood and adolescence.

Our childhood and youth fell in the 1990s in Poland, a decade of transition. From our personal perspective, it was a mental breakthrough; from a historical standpoint, a systemic transformation. The drab, austere reality of the Polish People’s Republic was gradually giving way to a world of color, access to pop culture, an abundance of books and magazines, new toys, the first text messages, the first computers, the first PlayStation games, freedom of speech, solidarity, and access to a wide range of musical genres. We remember how we were “intoxicated by the West” and waited with pounding hearts for the first McDonald’s and a pair of Adidas sneakers. Between gray apartment blocks, we dreamed of the items we saw in commercials and shop windows. Regardless of how historians or psychologists assess that time, for us it was wonderful simply because it was the time of our childhood and youth. That is the story we want to tell here.