Meet us at Photo London!

We are thrilled to announce that Rethinking Eastern Europe will be exhibiting at Photo London 2026, the UK's leading photography fair, as part of the Discovery section — a platform dedicated to emerging and boundary-pushing voices in photography.

This marks a significant milestone for the collective, bringing together twelve artists whose practices explore memory, identity, belonging, and the rich and complex histories of Central and Eastern Europe. The exhibition will be on view at Olympia, London, from 13–17 May 2026, with a VIP preview on 13 May.

❋ Booth J 02

Meet the artists and see the work. 

❋ Events and workshops

Scroll down for our full program for the fair. Follow us on Instagram for updates and behind the scene snippets.

Artists

A woman with dark hair standing against a wall, with her hands raised upward. She is wearing a light-colored top and long, wide-leg pants. There is a projection of clouds and a moon on the wall behind her, giving a surreal or artistic effect.

Zula Rabikowska

Polish visual artist and founder of Rethinking Eastern Europe, focusing on themes of migration, Eastern Europe, and the LGBTQI+ communities, drawing inspiration from her Polish heritage and upbringing. Through her photography, Zula aims to amplify voices often overlooked, using an intentional approach to explore the complexity of identity and the power of human connection.

Prototype palm tree street decoration on a foggy day in front of small shops and a fence.

Paulina Korobkiewicz

Polish London-based photographer and visual artist exploring cultural identity, memory, and the transformation of social spaces. Her projects focus on the visual and cultural landscape of her hometown as well as UK, documenting everyday environments with a sense of nostalgia and socio-political commentary, drawing from her own experience of migration.

Two women standing outside a building, with a piece of sheer fabric draped over their heads, casting shadows on the wall behind them. The wall has handwritten text that reads, 'but the veil is heavy toward my flower, my flower, sorrow will tear it down, my flower, my flower.'

Zsuzsanna Ida Papp

Hungarian visual artist based in Bratislava. Her creative approach is characterized by artistic research, combining community and independent art projects, blurring the boundaries between genres and mediums. She explores Eastern-European and female identity, visual and spiritual heritage, peasant culture and folklore, visual storytelling.

Woman standing on balcony with plants, sunlight casting shadows, wearing yellow coat with black trim, red headscarf.

Vera Hadzhiyska

Bulgarian multi-disciplinary artist, curator and photography lecturer based in Portsmouth. Her practice explores themes of migration, cultural and national identity, history, and collective memory. Vera's work traces family narratives and shared traumas. Through the use of photography, archival documents, audio and video installations she examines historical and political events and their impact on people’s lives and identity.

Person with head replaced by a bird's nest, standing against a wooden wall, wearing a knitted sweater.

Magda Kuca

Polish visual artist and photographer based in London. She explores the cyclical nature of rituals and traditions through portraiture and visual storytelling. Specialising in historical photographic techniques, such as wet collodion, her work reflects the link between folklore, individual memory and shared ancestry. Her projects draw on personal experience, pagan traditions and Slavic culture.

Open photo album on a colorful checkered tablecloth, showing a vintage wristwatch with a leather strap on the left page and a black-and-white wedding photo of a bride and groom on the right page.

Diana Serban

Romanian visual artist based in London, working primarily with photography and installation. Her practice explores memory, identity, and constructed realities, investigating the quiet politics of domestic and public space, particularly in pre and post-communist Romania, where objects and material environments become containers of belonging, transformation, and emotional legacy.

Woman with braided hair and red ribbons lifting beige satin fabric.

Marcelina Amelia

Multidisciplinary artist born in Częstochowa, Poland, and based in Brighton, UK. Her practice spans painting, print, textile, photography, installation, video, and performance. Drawing from her Polish heritage, she explores migration, motherhood, mental health, feminism, spirituality, personal rituals, and dreams, and has exhibited internationally.

Contrast between old, weathered house wall with chimneys and modern high-rise apartments in the background.

Ksenia Kazintseva

Multidisciplinary artist and producer working across painting, text, and participatory formats to explore memory, migration, and the emotional archives of Central and Eastern European experience. Rooted in her background between cultures, her practice blends personal narrative, research, and community engagement into immersive installations and experiences.

Close-up of two people sewing a white piece of fabric together with a needle and thread.

Alexandra Baker

Polish-English multidisciplinary artist based in London. She works across painting, photography, collage, and other mediums, exploring themes of home, memory, belonging, and womanhood. Drawing on Eastern European heritage and personal histories, her practice reinterprets folk motifs and cultural symbols through a contemporary lens, often centring women as carriers of memory, identity, and cultural continuity.

Close-up of a multi-story building's glass facade with pink and frosted panels and windows, some with reflections and partially open doors.

Michaela Nagyidaiová

Slovak visual artist living and working between Vienna and Bratislava. Her practice explores the intersections of memory, migration, and landscape, tracing the social and environmental transformations of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. Grounded in lived experience and her regional background, she examines how ideology and politics permeate everyday life - shaping communities, and family histories.

A forest with tall trees on a sloped land with brown leaves and green foliage.

Laura Bivolaru

An early-career Romanian cultural practitioner in the field of photography, activating between artistic research, writing, curating, and education. She works with photographs, text and moving image to explore the tension between nation and individual, and to reveal the impact of time, collective narratives and history on lived experience.

A collage with an old photograph of a young person in a hat and coat, handwritten notes, torn paper, and a dried leaf arranged on a blue textured background.

Maria Gvardeitseva

Belarus-born, Riga-based multidisciplinary visual artist working across performance, installation, sculpture, photography, and video. She has presented multiple museum exhibitions, including solo shows at the Mark Rothko Art Centre (Latvia), the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History (Lithuania), and the Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust Museum (Latvia), and is the author of the artist book Five Minutes Bedtime Stories (Skira, 2025).

Two women wearing orange hoods and holding shovels stand outdoors near a small mound of dirt. They are standing on an orange cloth with a flower ring around an oval hole in the center. The setting is in a wooded area with trees and foliage in the background.

GRUPA ŁONO

Feminist art incubator founded by Marcelina Amelia and Marta Borkowska, united by a shared dream. It was created as a response to a reality in which women must fight daily for bodily autonomy, offering a space for free expression, empathy, and community. Working across visual arts and community practice, the group explores themes of the body, emotions, relationships, and connection to nature.

EVENTS ❋ Booth J 02

Thursday 14th May

12pm - 2pm - Glass Plate Studio
Glass Plate Portrait Studio by Magda Kuca - Magda will capture participants of the fair on dry plates provided by Zebra & large format camera

Visitors are welcome to experience one of the oldest photographic processes as portrait sitters and invited for a glimpse into Magda’s practice rooted in craft based processes. During a 2h portrait studio artist will capture portraits of visitors on dry gelatine glass plates using a large format camera.

3.30pm - 4pm - Paulina Korobkiewicz
“Disco Polo”, “Homeland” and “Wall Unit” Book Signing

Disco Polo documents the aesthetics in Eastern Poland after 1989. This project focuses on the mixed influences from East and West, the effects of global capitalism on the Polish landscape dominated by consuming colourful advertising. Lack of experts in local housing associations resulted in randomly chosen shades, turning the streets into a vivid collage of pastel tower blocks. Project presents kitsch of rough-and-ready billboards, suburban night-clubs and bright-coloured concrete blocks. It explores omnipresent visual chaos in the urban landscape and search for a ‘better world’. Title Disco Polo represents locally most popular music genre of the same name, which developed in Eastern Poland around the time of the political transition. The genre created its own aesthetics, from the outfits to the venues where it is performed. Naive lyrics and over-saturated video clips often embody longing for western capitalism and hope for better future.

4pm - 4.30pm - Marcelina Amelia
“Mamalia” Book Signing

Mamalia by Marcelina Amelia combines photographs, sketches, texts, and paintings from the beginnings of motherhood. The title plays on “papalia,” the Polish term for souvenirs tied to Catholic iconography, and the English word “mammal,” evoking the body, nurturing, and care. Through intimate fragments, the book explores tenderness, exhaustion, love, and transformation, while reflecting on women’s voices, bodily autonomy, and stories often left unheard. Mamalia is both a personal archive and a subtle reflection on the social and political landscapes shaping maternal experience.


6.30pm - 7pm - Magda Kuca
“Tales” Book Signing

Tales is Magda Kuca’s first book, compiling a decade of work exploring Eastern European identity and storytelling, examining the relationship between folklore and the supernatural. Interweaving images like visual fables, it portrays a space where humans, animals, plants, and objects intersect across time and memory. Foreword fragments by Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photography V&A. Handmade and hand-bound by Lee Elkins. Limited edition; last copies available for purchase and signing.

7pm - 7.30pm - Zula Rabikowska
“Nothing but a Curtain” Book Signing

Nothing but a Curtain is a project exploring gender identity, womanhood, and queerness across Central and Eastern Europe. The work examines how personal narratives, cultural expectations, and political histories intersect in a region shaped by the legacy of the former Iron Curtain. The project is the result of several years of research and preparation, culminating in a labour-intensive 100-day journey along the former border of the Eastern Bloc. Rabikowska travelled 4,552 miles (7,325.8 km) through 20 cities in Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria to document how younger generations experience the ongoing legacy of communism. Focusing on women, non-binary, genderfluid, and transgender people born during or shortly after the Soviet era, the project examines the personal, social, and political impacts of the region’s rapid geopolitical transformation. Foreword by Gem Fletcher.


Friday 15th May

12pm - 12.30pm - Embroidery Workshop
Learn how to embroider with Ksenia Kazintseva

Tailored specifically for the context of Photo London, this 60-minute hands-on workshop bridges traditional Eastern European textile craft with the photographic medium. Rather than complex, time-consuming cross-stitch, participants will explore the contemporary practice of "photo-embroidery" and mixed-media collage. Using printed images and archival photographs as a base canvas, attendees will learn simple, accessible stitching techniques to physically alter, embellish, and weave new narratives into the photographs. The workshop invites participants to explore themes of memory, heritage, and identity through the tactile, slow-paced intervention of thread on paper. All materials are provided, and absolutely no prior embroidery experience is required.

1pm - 1.15pm - Poetry Performance
Performed by Ksenia Kazintseva

A captivating, intimate 15-minute live performance by Ksenia Kazintseva, weaving together original spoken word poetry and traditional a cappella Eastern European folk singing. Drawing on the rich oral traditions and mythology of the region, the performance explores overarching themes of displacement, cultural roots, and female storytelling. This raw, acoustic delivery serves as a sonic extension of the visual works presented by the Rethinking Eastern Europe collective, offering audiences a deeply immersive and emotive cultural experience to break up the busy pace of the fair.

Saturday 16th May

11am - 12pm - Eastern European Photography Artist Talk
Vera Hadzhiyska, Zula Rabikowska & Michaela Nagyidaiová

This conversation brings together three artists from across Eastern Europe and its diaspora to explore the shifting cultural, political, and artistic landscapes of the region. Vera Hadzhiyska, Bulgarian artist, curator, and educator, reflects on her practice navigating post-socialist realities and the role of education in shaping contemporary art. Michaela, a Slovak artist based in Vienna, discusses her work at the intersection of memory, migration, and identity, highlighting how displacement and cross-border experiences inform artistic production. Zula Rabikowska, Polish photographer and curator based in London, considers photography as a medium for rethinking narratives of belonging, community, and marginality.

13th-16th May

Film Screening - Screening Room

A Geography of Strangers (2026) A film by Zula Rabikowska

“A Geography of Strangers” is an autobiographical exploration of life after Brexit from the perspective of a queer Polish immigrant living in London. The short film is divided into two parts: the first traces the shifting political landscape in the UK and the rise of right-wing politics across Europe; the second examines the role of women in domestic spaces, highlighting the repetition and absurdity of mundane tasks, and the loneliness that emerges from inherited gender roles in Central and Eastern Europe. 

Wednesday 13th 3pm - 4pm

Thursday 14th 3.30pm - 4.30pm

Friday 15th 3pm - 3.30pm

Saturday 16th 3.30pm - 4.30pm

Sunday 17th 3pm - 3.30pm

Book your ticket

14-17 May Tickets