2024
2026

Matters of Evidence

© Natalia Romik, 2021

How can we challenge hegemonic narratives that legitimize social, environmental, or economic injustice by uncovering physical traces of what has happened? What role can material evidence play in exposing and debunking distorted histories or false claims? And what strategies can help us create, sustain, and propagate truthful narratives to push back against populism in a time when facts are often ignored or manipulated?

Matters of Evidence is a growing exhibition and series of transdisciplinary seminars that explore how evidential tactics and different strategies of visualization can be used to create counter-narratives that foster historical awareness, intervene in public debate, or can hold up in a court of law. At its core, the project reflects on the role of evidence in the age of post-truth—how evidence can be instrumentalized, denied, or misrepresented, but also how it can withstand scrutiny, inform public understanding, and have social impact. Across its iterations, Matters of Evidence foregrounds the disciplinary procedures through which truths are asserted, challenged, and made visible.

Spanning from 2024 into 2026, Matters of Evidence unfolds through a series of conferences, seminars, and an evolving exhibition that examines the concept of evidence as both a contested and crucial terrain in contemporary culture and politics.

Matters of Evidence began with a public conference "On how to unearth and manifest material traces" at ZKM | Karlsruhe in June 2024, bringing together artists, architects, scholars, activists, and historians to present selected pieces of evidence and share methods of investigation and display across a diverse field of disciplines. This event laid the groundwork for an evolving exhibition, launched in September 2024 as part of Fellow Travellers at ZKM. The exhibition contextualizes and displays the materials introduced during the conference, presenting them as nodes in a growing network of inquiry.

In June 2025, Matters of Evidence continued with a seminar, "Calling material witnesses to counter nationalist narratives" that contributed to the expansion of the exhibition by featuring practices of artists, activists, and academics dedicated to unearthing material evidence in order to disrupt nationalist stories of immaculate origins, pierce contemporary obfuscations around far-right influence, and testify to suppressed or denied histories. The project is developed in subsequent iterations to deepen the exploration of evidentiary practices in fields such as archival and architectural research, Holocaust and historical studies, climate science, forensics, and the documentation of human rights violations. 

Matters of Evidence is co-conceived by curator and researcher Kuba Szreder (Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw) and artist and architect Natalia Romik  (Warsaw), in collaboration with the team of the ZKM | Karlsruhe. It builds on Romik’s ongoing work "Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival" which originated in 2022 with exhibitions at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw and CCA TRAFO in Szczecin in 2022, and the Jewish Museum Frankfurt in 2024.

Project team

Curatorial concept: Kuba Szreder (Curator, Academy of Fine Arts Warsaw)
Artistic concept: Natalia Romik (Artist & Architect, Warsaw)
Steering Committee: Alistair HudsonDaniel PiesNatalia RomikKuba Szreder

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