Polish visual artist and filmmaker Karol Radziszewski, together with Swedish director Markus Öhrn, created the theatre piece Phobia, which the Hungarian audience could see at Trafó House of Contemporary Arts in November 2025. We sat down with Radziszewski to talk about the concept behind the play, which is rooted in one of his long-term artistic projects. Since 2005 he has been developing the fictional queer gang known as the Fag Fighters, whose pink-masked figures reappear across his works of various genres.

Radziszewski’s practice also extends into archival research. In 2015 he founded the Queer Archives Institute, dedicated to uncovering and preserving queer histories in Central and Eastern Europe. He is also the publisher of a magazine called DIK Fagazine: every issue explores a specific city’s queer culture and history. The latest Budapest issue, accompanying Radziszewski’s Sinners exhibition at acb Gallery, was developed in collaboration with curator Gyula Muskovics.

Karol Radziszewski photographed by Kuba Dabrowski.

Firstly, could you tell me how Queer Archives Insitute came about?

When I was studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, most of the artists we looked up to were from the West, especially from the United States – people like Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, or Keith Haring. These were major queer figures in art and important references for us, but I was struggling to find any local equivalents, any artists from my own region whose work openly engaged with queer identity. There was this common narrative that homosexuality or queerness was something imported from the West, something foreign to Eastern Europe.

So eventually, I decided to create something myself. I organized what became the first openly gay exhibition in the history of Poland. There had been queer artists before, of course, but they had never officially come out or framed their work publicly in those terms. The exhibition was titled Faggots – it was meant as a manifesto. I was in my early twenties at the time. People saw it as brave, but it became quite a scandal. I have been treated in a very specific way since then, as if I had crossed a line. I wanted to prove that queer identities had always existed in this region, that there was a local history, language, and cultural tradition connected to them. So, I began collecting material: documents, and personal stories, and began working more seriously with archival sources. That process ultimately became the foundation for creating the Queer Archives Institute.

Would you say that archives have a specific power that makes it easier to connect to the past and to the stories that you are searching for?

For me, working with archives is not really about nostalgia or simply looking back on history. What interests me more is how the stories contained in the archive can be activated in the present or even projected into the future. They can inspire new ways of thinking about identity, community, and continuity. The connection to the past becomes something very real and immediate. It’s not just history preserved in documents – it’s something alive, something that can still act and resonate today.

Let’s talk about DIK Fagazine. It’s the fifteenth edition now, right? How do you start the process of making a new issue? Do you search for collaborators who are local in that city?

DIK Fagazine 15, Budapest issue. Design: Martin Falck.

Every issue is different depending on my personal connections with the countries and their people. The previous issue is about Vienna, and that already contains many references to Hungary and its history.

Gyula Muskovics and I had been friends for many, many years and we had been talking about doing a special issue about Hungary. We gathered so much information and so many stories that the Budapest issue turned out to be probably the richest one so far. Every city is different. This time for instance, I was surprised to find so many paintings which seemed almost homoerotic while I was walking around in the Hungarian National Gallery by myself. I was also fascinated by how diverse the work of El Kazovszky is, and by how his reception as a trans artist has changed since his time.

Do you feel like the current political situation affects your work?

Definitely. We used to have a very conservative government in Poland. Now it’s rather center-right, so it’s better but still problematic in terms of women’s rights and LGBTQ rights. Political context is always important for me. Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary are often accused of being the most homophobic countries in Europe. That’s true in a way, but with this issue of the magazine Gyula and I also wanted to show something more complex. On one hand, it’s a political act to show queer history. On the other hand, we wanted to avoid the exoticization that Western journalists sometimes create – this idea that Hungary is almost like Russia, where gay people cannot live their lives and are basically living in fear every day. In fact, we were cruising, meeting people, seeing communities. Even though the laws and propaganda are strong, there is still a vibrant queer life in Budapest.

How do you deal with the possibility that your work might be taken out of context?

I’m used to it. When you become more visible and get more attention, your work is more likely to be manipulated or simplified. There isn’t much you can do about that. But social media gives me a certain independence. I can present things directly in my own way. One example comes to mind when the public television in Poland secretly recorded my phone calls and filmed me in a restaurant. So, I filmed them back with my iPhone and posted the video on my social media. It became a kind of cultural fight – you just need to be ready for it and be willing to play with it.

It is refreshing to hear that social media might be a tool that one actually enjoys using. I have a feeling that the pressure to become sort of an influencer is a struggle for many artists.

I used to struggle as well, but eventually I found ways to make it interesting for myself. I like making short videos and combining them with music; I treat my Instagram stories like a reality show. I also enjoy filming my friends. Look what I posted today: it’s my friend undressing, doing a little striptease in front of one of my paintings in the gallery. Everyone can watch my stories – even my mom watches them, as well as the curators and directors and so on. So, I don’t just simply use it to promote my work, I make it fun.

Do you feel like you’re controversial? Would you like to be?

Maybe I was more controversial twenty years ago when I started. I really wanted to provoke society and fight for my identity. Much of my early work was very explicit. Projects like Fag Fighters were meant as a punch in the face for society. Later, when I started working with archives, the themes were still there – LGBTQ topics, nudity – but the approach became more subtle. Now I don’t feel like I’m doing anything particularly controversial. But of course, it depends on how people interpret the work. I mostly don’t care anymore – I just do what I want to do.

How do you deal with being put in a box and labeled as a gay artist or a queer artist?

After I made the first openly gay exhibition in Poland, everything I did was suddenly interpreted as “gay.” I could paint flowers and people would say, “Ah, these are gay flowers.” I could draw a pink line and they would say, “It’s a gay line.” At the beginning, I was described as one of the most promising young artists in Poland. Later I became an established artist. And now I’m often called one of the most important queer artists. This way, instead of competing with hundreds of artists, you suddenly find yourself competing with some twenty-five queer artists. It’s a strange category. I would like to be considered a queer artist. But not because of the content of my work. Queerness can also be an approach to art and life. It’s about being politically provocative and questioning norms.

Do you think artists have to be political?

That’s an interesting question. When I did my exhibition, Faggots, I said in interviews that I wasn’t interested in activism or politics, I just wanted to explore sexuality and pleasure. But later I realized that sexuality and pleasure are already political by nature. Still, I don’t think every artist has to be political, but if you call yourself a queer artist, then for me the political dimension is important.

Elements of your earlier work and the characters of Fag Fighters appear in your theater piece, Phobia – this way you kind of cross-reference your own art, which I find fascinating. Would you tell me how you came up with Fag Fighters?

I’m kind of a long-distance artist – or long-distance human. My magazine, for example: I’ve been working on it for twenty years. Not many magazines survive that long, especially when they are run by only one artist and not by a company or an association. The core idea of Fag Fighters was solid from the beginning. I came up with the concept in 2007, when a very conservative government came to power in Poland. I wanted to do something that combined all the stereotypes about gay men. One stereotype was that gay people were a threat to society – that they would come and rape your son, your husband, your uncle, your grandfather, whatever. But at the same time, they were also portrayed as feminine, fragile, liking pink, and not being “real men.” I combined these two clichés and created this crazy gang of gays wearing pink masks, attacking straight guys.

Many people think that Fag Fighters is intended as some kind of tribute to feminist activism or that I am referencing Pussy Riot with the masks. This project, however, was invented two years before Pussy Riot started (and the masks were originally knitted by my grandmother). It’s just that I was a young artist in Poland, and nobody really cared at that time.

Phobia. Photo by Maurycy Stankiewicz.

Let’s talk about Phobia. Is this your first theater project?

I have worked on theater productions, but only as a scenographer or costume designer. This is the first time I’m credited as the author of the concept and the creator of the piece. I wasn’t directing though – that was Marcus’s role, because he has a very specific way of working with actors. But we developed the concept, the text, the scenography, and the costumes together as well. I was present at every rehearsal.

When the actors were improvising or proposing ideas, Marcus and I would discuss them afterwards. Then the next day he would come back with suggestions or solutions for the actors. In fact, apart from the actual directing, I was involved in every stage of the production.

How was this experience new for you?

I have a problem with this bourgeois idea of theatre where people pay for the ticket, and they come and they sit down in the dark and they judge what they see. They don’t have to question their position as audience members. But even more so, I think repetition is what terrifies me most about theatre. You can’t ever be sure whether something is going to work or not. I might be a control-freak, but it’s a nightmare for me not to be able to do anything if it doesn’t. Whatever happens on stage, I can’t change that anymore.

Were you able to detect any reactions from people at all?

The reactions are always quite interesting. It really depends on each person’s sensitivity. For me, everything is a metaphor in the play. Even if we use a lot of fake blood (you can literally see the bottle on stage), it’s still depiction. But people freak out. What might be the most triggering is that we play with the topic of sexual violence. They complain about it being offensive without realizing that yes, that is exactly the point.

One review of Phobia in a Polish theater magazine was very surprising to me. The author had Belarusian roots and wrote that it was extremely difficult for her to watch the scenes involving violence, like the breaking of fingernails, because it reminded her of her father or uncle being interrogated by police in Belarus. She argued that such scenes should either be forbidden or at least announced as a trigger warning before the performance. When you hear something like that, you start thinking: if we try to warn people about every possible association someone might have, we will have to remove almost everything from the play. The question is: how long can you keep maintaining a safe space if you want to experiment in art? Art often involves a risk. That doesn’t mean people should feel abused or attacked.  But today, even artistic risk is sometimes considered unacceptable because it makes people uncomfortable.

Is art supposed to make you feel uncomfortable?

That’s my favourite kind of art. I can also imagine another type of art – a beautiful kind that seduces you or makes the world feel like a better place. For example, I can be very moved by a beautiful or sad piece of music. But that’s not my approach to visual art or theater. Those, I think, work best when they make the audience uncomfortable. For me, uncomfortable means that something isn’t working in the expected way. Something surprises you and forces you to think. That’s not the same as being unsafe in a space, however. What makes the difference is the distinction between discomfort and actual harm. Art can challenge people, disturb them, make them question things. That’s very different from creating a space where people are genuinely unsafe. For me, the possibility of discomfort is essential to artistic freedom. Without that possibility, art becomes something very limited and predictable.

Do you have a target audience in mind when you come up with concepts, workshop ideas?

When I create something, I like to think of that as a birthday cake. The surface should be attractive and accessible, hiding many layers underneath. My work often uses pop elements that draw people’s attention. But then something doesn’t quite fit, and the viewer becomes curious and wants to look deeper. At heart, I’m a conceptual artist, and my work can be quite complex, even if it looks simple at first sight. I don’t create for a specific audience. Anyone can approach the work, but the depth of the experience depends on how much the viewer is willing to engage with it. I do want to intrigue people.

Another important aspect of this question though, is that I know the kind of audience that usually shows up in these experimental theatres like Trafó, or Warsaw’s Nowy Teatr. Their image of themselves is that they are a “good audience” for watching a play about how others are not good enough. They are usually open and friendly towards all identities, and they would say they are not homophobic. But sometimes they just simply don’t care deeply enough. And that is exactly what we are accusing them of. That’s really the whole concept behind Phobia.

We tried to do everything possible to make this specific audience feel at least a bit uncomfortable and realize that the play is also about them. Our point is that presenting LGBTQ people mainly as victims, and responding to them with pity, can in fact make them targets.

I think that’s very important. Thematizing the problems of society by blaming people with mindsets different from ours – this cannot be a truly brave act if you know that your audience already agrees with you. To know well and challenge your own audience is not just about making them uncomfortable, but to make them reflect on how accepting they actually are.

Exactly. I’m curious about what you will say after seeing the performance, because the reactions are very contradictory. It’s funny to hear the comments afterwards. Some gay audience members are also offended and say that the play is homophobic. In a way that shows they completely didn’t get what they saw.

Oh, they say that you are being homophobic.

Yes. But many of my projects are considered homophobic. What could I even say to that, it’s ridiculous. I honestly think that if someone is offended by what I do, that means they lack a certain level of self-reflection. Or even a sense of humor. At the end of the day, Phobia is also a very funny play. A horror comedy if you will.