The Nguyen Wahed space in London will present Repeat After Me II, a two-channel video installation by the Ukrainian art collective Open Group, previously shown in the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2024. The authors announced this on the group’s Facebook page.
The authors are Yuriy Biletskyy, Pavlo Kovach, and Anton Varga (Open Group), and the curator is Marta Czyż. The work explores how the experience of war is engraved in memory through sound — gunshots, explosions, cannon fire, and sirens.
At the centre of the installation are civilian refugees who reproduce the sounds of weapons, recalling their own war experiences, and invite viewers to repeat them along with them. Visitors become participants in a unique performance in a space designed as a futuristic military karaoke bar, where the sounds of war replace popular songs and descriptions of deadly mechanisms replace lyrics.
Repeat After Me II transforms sound into a language of testimony and memory, inviting the viewer not only to listen, but also to physically experience the experience of another.
The project will open on 6 February and run until 3 March 2026 in London.
The exhibition is supported by the Polish Cultural Institute in London, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute at the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.