From 18 September, Warsaw will host one of the most distinctive exhibition projects to arrive in Poland this year. Tilda Swinton – Ongoing will transform the newly opened Creative Industries Institute at 65 Mińska Street into a space exploring the friendships, conversations and artistic collaborations that have shaped Swinton's career.
The exhibition, organised by Malta Festival, runs until 17 January 2027. Rather than following the familiar route of a career retrospective, Ongoing looks sideways, towards the people and creative relationships behind some of the Scottish actress and artist's most memorable work.
For Warsaw, there is an added element of discovery. The exhibition will occupy approximately 1,000 square metres of the former Polish Press Agency (PAP) printing house, a raw post-industrial setting being adapted for the project by architect Maciej Siuda.
A different way of looking at Tilda Swinton's career
Swinton has spent more than four decades moving between cinema, performance and visual art. Her work has taken her from early performances in Edinburgh and collaborations with the Royal Shakespeare Company to films with directors including Wes Anderson, Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Almodóvar, Luca Guadagnino, Joanna Hogg and Lynne Ramsay.
Ongoing takes that history and rearranges it.
The exhibition is built around creative relationships rather than dates and milestones. Films, photographs, objects, installations and archival material are brought together with new works commissioned for the project.
I particularly did not want to create a retrospective,” explains Tilda Swinton. “I am interested in the process that is still unfolding. 'Ongoing' is an attempt to map the creative relationships that have shaped - and continue to shape - my life for over 40 years: the conversations, friendships and collaborations from which films and projects are born. This is why I am particularly thrilled that the exhibition is coming to Poland – a country with a remarkable cinematic history and creative courage, whose culture has inspired artists worldwide for generations. I hope that here, too, 'Ongoing' will become the starting point for further conversations and new encounters, encouraging emerging artists to realise that the power of making work rooted of the fellowship of friendship is something we never need to abandon or fail to be nourished by” she adds.
That approach puts the spotlight on the exchange between Swinton and the artists around her. Pedro Almodóvar, Luca Guadagnino, Joanna Hogg, Derek Jarman, Jim Jarmusch, Olivier Saillard, Tim Walker and Apichatpong Weerasethakul are among the collaborators represented.
Films, fashion, photography and The Maybe
There is plenty for film audiences to recognise, but the exhibition reaches well beyond the cinema screen.
Joanna Hogg's new installation Flat 19 is among the works presented in Warsaw, alongside Apichatpong Weerasethakul's film Phantoms and Luca Guadagnino's Camaraderie.
Fashion and performance also have prominent places. Olivier Saillard's A Biographical Wardrobe explores Swinton's relationship with clothing and image, while a presentation devoted to The Maybe revisits one of the most important performance works of her career.
The result brings together very different forms of artistic practice without forcing them into a single narrative. Cinema sits alongside installation, photography, fashion and archival material, reflecting a career that has never fitted neatly into one discipline.
From Amsterdam and Athens to Mińska Street
Warsaw is the next stop in the international journey of Ongoing, following presentations at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam and Onassis Ready in Athens.
The setting here will be markedly different.
Instead of an established museum gallery, the exhibition is being installed in the newly designated Creative Industries Institute, housed in the former PAP printing house. The building's industrial character has been retained as part of the experience, with Maciej Siuda developing the Warsaw adaptation specifically for the venue.
The scale is significant for the new institution. Around 1,000 square metres will be given over to the exhibition, making Ongoing its first project of this kind and scale.
The architecture is therefore not simply a container for the artworks. Its raw, post-industrial qualities form part of the encounter with the exhibition itself.
A project with a Malta connection
The Warsaw presentation also continues a relationship between Tilda Swinton and Malta Festival.
In 2025, the festival presented Embodying Pasolini, Swinton's performance created with Olivier Saillard, in Poznań. The connection now extends to Warsaw with an exhibition centred on many of the same ideas that have featured prominently in Malta's programme: artistic independence, collaboration, memory, friendship and the meeting of different disciplines.
There are projects that transcend the boundaries of a single discipline and a single location,” admits Dominika Kulczyk, patron of Malta Festival. “‘Tilda Swinton – Ongoing’ is precisely such an endeavor. It speaks of collaboration as the most precious value in both art and life – of relationships that, over time, become a source of courage, imagination and new ideas. These values are deeply aligned with Malta Festival. I am proud that after Amsterdam and Athens, we can invite the Polish public to experience this extraordinary narrative in Warsaw, joining the international journey of one of the most significant exhibition projects of recent years.
For Warsaw's cultural calendar, the arrival of Ongoing also coincides with the opening of a new creative venue in a part of the city with a strong industrial history. Mińska Street and the surrounding Praga area have become increasingly associated with studios, galleries, cultural projects and creative businesses, making the former printing house an interesting location for a project concerned so closely with artistic exchange.
A new chapter for a new space
Tilda Swinton – Ongoing opens at the Creative Industries Institute on 18 September 2026 and continues until 17 January 2027.
It offers audiences a chance to encounter Swinton's work through an unusual lens, with the emphasis falling not on the conventional landmarks of a celebrated film career, but on the people, ideas and long-running creative partnerships that have grown around it.
That makes the Warsaw exhibition particularly well suited to its new home. A former printing house, adapted for a new generation of creative work, will become the meeting point for decades of cinema, performance, fashion, photography and artistic collaboration.
Exhibition details
Exhibition: Tilda Swinton – Ongoing
Dates: 18 September 2026 to 17 January 2027
Venue: Creative Industries Institute, 65 Mińska Street, Warsaw
Organiser: Malta Festival
Architecture: Maciej Siuda
Tickets: Available through the official exhibition website
See more: From Punk to Politics: Poland’s Independent Zines on Display in Warsaw
Source and image credit: Malta Festival
