Name: Open Group: Repeat After Me II — London Opening
Start: 2026-02-06T18:00:00+00:00
End: 2026-02-06T20:00:00+00:00
Location: Nguyen Wahed Gallery

$Open Group: Repeat After Me II \u2014 London Opening$

Join us to celebrate the London opening reception of Repeat After Me II, Open Group’s acclaimed Polish Pavilion work from Venice Biennale.
About this Event

Nguyen Wahed Gallery is pleased to present Repeat After Me II, a two-channel video installation previously presented in the Polish Pavilion at the International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia in 2024. Featuring Ukrainian refugees who imitate weapon sounds and invite audiences to participate in a futuristic military karaoke experience, the work explores how survivors of war articulate their trauma through sound.
Repeat After Me II invites visitors to join a re-enactment within a space staged as a futuristic military karaoke bar, where the soundtrack comprises gunfire, cannonades, howls, and explosions, while lyrics describe deadly weapons. By repeating after the protagonists, audiences begin to learn the language of their experience. The exhibition presents films from different stages of the war, underscoring its grim continuity. In the 2024 iteration, testimonies shift to a transnational context, featuring Ukrainian protagonists now residing in cities across Europe and beyond: Wrocław, Berlin, Vienna, Vilnius, Tullamore, and New York. This expansion portrays characters at a moment when the war in Ukraine has lasted over two years and become embedded in everyday reality, serving as a universal message—a collective portrait of refugees from around the world. Repeat After Me II functions as both warning and manual, a manifesto against all armed conflict delivered in peaceful form.

This exhibition is supported by the Polish Cultural Institute London, under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland, and by Adam Mickiewicz Institute, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.