Leander Schwazer & Nazar Strelyaev Nazarko

And above all, what makes it real? In this gap between present and expectation, one can glimpse what Jacques Derrida, in Rogues: Two Essays on Reason (2003), defined as “democracy to come”: not a completed political form, but a structurally unfinished promise, always deferred, existing precisely in its openness to the other and in its continual postponement. From this perspective, democracy never fully coincides with its institutions, but inhabits the fragile space between what is and what has yet to be. The installation by Leander Schwazer (1982, Italy) takes shape through a gesture of recovery and transformation. Discarded advertising letters, sourced from various European cities and originally intended to disseminate commercial messages in public space, are rewired and reactivated to compose the phrase Democracy is coming. The illuminated letters are not arranged in a straight line but follow the trajectory of a logarithmic spiral suspended from the ceiling, like an artificial firmament. This luminous constellation suggests a possible cosmology for democracy: a system of orientation, similar to that which guided navigators through the stars for centuries. In this sense, the work is not only a message but an open question about how we orient ourselves in the present. Democracy thus appears not as a point of arrival, but as a field of forces, a direction to be collectively sought— or, following Derrida, something that exists precisely in its impossibility of ever being definitively reached, like a star that guides without ever being touched. At the entrance to the space, the installation Tutto è in equilibrio introduces a participatory dimension. Hundreds of spirit levels suspended on threads form a vibrating surface that responds to the movement of viewers. Their balance can be altered or restored by the audience’s passage, transforming the work into a sensitive organism. Positioned in front of the gallery window, the levels recall a contemporary stained-glass window: colored light filters into the space and renders the instability of equilibrium visible. Like democracy itself, the work exists only through participation and shared responsibility. Balance is not given once and for all: it must be continually negotiated, exposed to risk and alteration—always, once again, to come. “It’s coming from the women and the men,” sang Leonard Cohen, and on the walls the paintings by Nazar Strelyaev-Nazarko (1998, Ukraine) introduce the human and narrative dimension of the exhibition. If Schwazer’s installation suggests a cosmic or systemic structure, Nazar’s figures function as a possible polis, reminding us that without people there is no democracy. Born and raised in Kharkiv, a city marked by a layered cultural history, Strelyaev-Nazarko intertwines personal memory, political history, and painterly tradition. His visual language emerges from the encounter between post-Soviet academic training, a passion for the European Old Masters, and a subtle irony that runs through his subjects. In the painting Babylonian, the artist reworks an image found in a Soviet propaganda book that belonged to his grandmother: a female worker depicted with a chain around her neck. By transforming that figure into a more sensual and ambiguous portrait—with a semi-transparent shirt and a golden chain draped over her shoulders—Nazar constructs an image suspended between seduction, power, and constraint. The title refers to the Tower of Babel, a symbol of collective ambition destined for collapse. In this reading, the utopian project of the Soviet Union appears as a new Babel: a monumental construction founded on the idea of universal progress, yet destined to fragment under the weight of its contradictions. Through his characters, Strelyaev-Nazarko explores how individual memory filters and reworks history. His paintings oscillate between nostalgia, critique, and humor, showing how the past survives in fragments, images, and myths that continue to shape the present. In Democracy is coming, the works of the two artists construct a dialogue between cosmic scale and personal dimension, between structure and body, between political promise and individual experience. Schwazer’s luminous spiral suggests a collective trajectory, while Nazar’s figures remind us that every political system is composed of individuals, with their memories, desires, and contradictions. The exhibition does not offer a definition of democracy. Rather, it proposes a space in which to orient oneself: among artificial stars, unstable balances, and figures emerging from history. Perhaps democracy is not a destination, but a direction—something that, as Cohen suggests and Derrida radicalizes, never ceases to arrive, because it exists precisely in its continual deferral.