“Hyperborea” means “beyond the north wind” or “the land beyond the north.” Tom Swoboda’s exhibition, which bears this title, is the story of a deeply personal journey into realms that lie beyond the reach of familiar maps and unambiguous definitions. It is an attempt to reach the spaces that lie between memory and imagination, experience and dreams, reality and its inner image.
“Hyperborea” is a space of exploration – a symbolic territory where it becomes possible to move beyond established ways of seeing and discover new relationships between people, memory and the world.
Swoboda’s original narrative does not lead to any clear-cut answers. Rather, it creates the conditions for an encounter with an image that emerges gradually, like a landscape revealing itself as one ventures beyond the boundaries of the familiar.

Tom Swoboda. Artistic practice, 2026
In his practice, Tom Swoboda focuses on phenomena which, for historical, ideological or structural reasons, have been marginalised within the dominant narratives. He is interested in ambiguous areas that exist outside stable categories of meaning – reconstructed through memory, conversation, traces, intuition or the experience of dreaming. The artist explores the ways in which language, the body and territory shape the relationships between the individual and social structures, whilst at the same time remaining spaces of resistance to unambiguous definitions.
His projects often take forms that defy clear distinctions between artistic disciplines, documentary, fiction and speculation. Swoboda is interested in states of limbo, incompleteness and non-belonging, treating them as tools for examining what remains invisible or difficult to name.
A key theme in his work is the exploration of boundaries – between humans and animals, nature and culture, freedom and control. Returning to the theme of the zoo, he analyses the spaces that structure the relationship between the observer and the observed. In his works, the zoo becomes a symbol of the contemporary order of visibility, a place where issues of care, isolation, representation and power intertwine.
Swoboda’s works do not put forward any clear-cut arguments. They function, rather, as cognitive situations that open up space for questions about the limits of the human perspective, the status of other forms of life, and the possibility of building relationships based on co-presence, mindfulness and interdependence.

Tom Swoboda – a visual artist working with photography, objects, drawing, installation and spatial narrative. In her practice, he explores the mechanisms of vision, power relations and the boundaries between the human and the non-human, combining posthumanist reflection with the experience of memory, dreams and transitional states. His works have been exhibited in galleries and contemporary art institutions in Poland and abroad, both in solo and group exhibitions. He collaborates with curators, artists and cultural institutions, carrying out projects that lie at the intersection of art, theory and visual criticism. His work is characterised by formal restraint and precision, which enable the image to become a tool for analysing contemporary social and cultural structures.
He graduated from the School of Ancient Japanese Culture in Czerwionka–Leszczyny and the Faculty of Sculpture at the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław. In 2023, he successfully defended his doctoral thesis at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice. He is a co-founder and co-director of the Szara Gallery in Cieszyn. He co-founded and co-ran Gallery 12 in Cieszyn and the Underground Art Centre in Clitheroe, UK. A finalist and winner of international competitions, including the LensCulture Portrait Awards (2018), the Sony World Photography Awards (2018), the BWA Bydgoszcz Open Call (2024) and the PIX.HOUSE Open Call (2025). A participant in the residency programme run by the bwa Municipal Gallery in Bydgoszcz at Białowieża National Park as part of his original project “Hyperborea” (2026). Scholarship holder of the Marshal of the Silesian Voivodeship in the field of culture (2026). Represented by the ESTA Gallery in Gliwice at Warsaw Gallery Weekend (2025), Art Warsaw Miodowa (2025), Art Collect Katowice (2026) and the Impuls Art Festival Katowice (2026).

curator: Danuta Milewska
The exhibition is organised in partnership with Bielsko-Biała, Poland’s Capital of Culture 2026

29.09.2026 – 22.11.2026
20 Gdańska St.