Karolina Breguła’s creative practice lies between artistic research and documentation. Her works stem from anthropological and sociological observations. She is also interested in collective storytelling and communal activities. When making projects on social, political and climate issues, Breguła invites collaborators and narrates their experiences.
Now Everything Will Be Different features works that Karolina Breguła created in Taiwan, a country to which the artist has felt a strong connection for over a decade. The exhibition opens with videos and photographs that are part of a multi-part project conducted in 2018–21 in a Daguan settlement in Banqiao near Taipei, and in Tainan, as well as its accompanying publication, Exercises in Losing Control. It then moves on to the artist’s more recent works, Pebbles (2026), The Tropic of Cancer (2025) and Low Tide (2021), created in the village of Xincuo and its surroundings.
What connects the works at the exhibition is the prospect of losing one’s home, and the anticipation of the coming change. The project in 2018–21 concerns mass demolitions and evictions in Taiwanese cities. The artist explores socio-political processes, the mechanisms of gentrification and the dominance of those in power, as well as the resistance tactics of people facing eviction.
‘Here time turns back. Can you see it?’ says one of the protagonists of The Tropic of Cancer, pointing to a line on the sand. ‘Soon everything will be different.’ Yet this foreshadowed change does not just concern the home of the sisters with whom Breguła shot the video. In the Low Tide photography series and in The Tropic of Cancer film we are also witnesses to a wider transformation of the world. The rhythm and structure of this process hinge on the elements and climate factors. We observe a transition akin to decay – not only of the landscape, but also of a certain place, understood as a living space and habitat.
The gradual loss of control is a recurring theme in Karolina Breguła’s works – both those dealing with the demolitions of houses and those created in coastal areas. In both cases, it comes from yielding to an external force – whether it be administrative decisions or environmental processes – that dispels the illusion of having control and power over reality. The ability to recognise oneself as part of the transformation caused by the forces of nature (present in the Xincuo works, particularly The Tropic of Cancer) may also be considered in terms of Morton’s hyperobject. Especially since the film’s narrative does not reinforce an anthropocentric vision of the world, it allows us to observe the relationships, dependencies and ties that connect people, other beings and the environment.
Learning how to accept certain situations and adjust to new realities is another part of the Daguan residents’ adaptation process. The last pages of Exercises in Losing Control present a conversation between the artist and two women. They speak of emotions connected to the evictions and of making their new houses into homes more than a year after their forced relocation. The protagonists agree that their painful experiences should now remain a memory, and their words carry a sense of hope. The conversation ends with the Tale of the Market. This story, created by the women and the artist, is a metaphor for the fading images of the past and ways of coping with loss.
Karolina Breguła’s Now Everything Will Be Different is a story about survival practices, awaiting change and the passage of time. Time that inevitably holds the spectre of loss and yet, through its longue durée, allows for a change of perspective and preparing for what may come.
