Europa (still), 1932, Franciszka och Stefan Themerson © Themerson Estate

Antifascism, Resistance and Queer Expressions in Central Europe

Conversation in the Collection

28.2 2026

Stockholm

Join a conversation about the political charge of art and its connections to anti-fascism and queer expression in Central Europe, past and present. The discussion features Moderna Museet curator Lena Essling and Stefan Ingvarsson, analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies.

With reference to the artistic practices of Franciszka and Stefan Themerson, and Toyen, and in relation to Karol Radziszewski – currently presenting the exhibition “The Classroom” at Moderna Museet – this season’s second Conversation in the collection focuses on connections between resistance in contemporary art and similar strategies within interwar surrealism. Art has functioned as a language of political opposition and as a means of articulating alternative understandings of identity, desire and belonging, then as now.

The conversation takes place in the exhibition “The Subterranean Sky – Surrealism in the Moderna Museet Collection”.

Stefan Ingvarsson

Stefan Ingvarsson is an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for East European Studies (SCEEUS) and project manager for European Expert Talks on Russia, an EU-funded project, both at the Swedish Institute for Foreign Affairs. He served as Cultural Counsellor at the Swedish Embassy in Moscow from 2015 to 2020. He has previously been artistic director of the Stockholm Literature festival at Moderna Museet and has a background in the publishing industry, public diplomacy and as a cultural writer and literary translator from Polish.

Stefan Ingvarsson was part of the original editorial board of the project DIK Fagazine in Warsaw, which was started and is run by Karol Radziszewski, and has collaborated with the artist on several issues of the magazine.

Stefan Ingvarsson
Europa (still), 1932, Franciszka och Stefan Themerson © Themerson Estate

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Antifascism, Resistance and Queer Expressions in Central Europe