Open City

Since 2026, following a decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union, Poland has had its first formal mechanism for recognising same-sex relationships. Queer couples who entered into a marriage abroad, within the European Union, can apply for its transcription — that is, registration — in Poland. The ruling is binding, and the administrative procedure should be straightforward: updating application forms, recognising same-sex marriages and the rights arising from them.

For Poland, however, it has not proved simple: public offices, which should be politically neutral, are not so for this community, because the rights of LGBTQ+ people have always been part of political struggle. Social pressure, media attention, the everyday work of human rights organisations, and individual activists have proved necessary.

Liliana Zeic – visual artist and PhD in Fine Arts, working at the intersection of queer feminism and queer ecology. Her projects explore marginality and non-normativity, as well as things perceived as defects, diseases or waste. She works with craft techniques, video, photography, objects and text, creating intermedia works rooted in artistic research. Since 2020, she has been developing her own technique of working with wood based on marquetry, the same technique used in her parents’ carpentry workshop. She works with burl wood — a growth that forms around an injury to a tree trunk — freeing it from its traditional decorative function.

She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, where she completed her PhD. She was a finalist of the Forecast Forum at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and the recipient of the Audience Award at the Spojrzenia 2019 competition. Her work has been presented in more than 130 exhibitions in Poland and internationally. Her works are held in, among others, the collections of Zachęta — National Gallery of Art, the Wrocław Museum of Contemporary Art, Arsenał Municipal Gallery and NOMUS.