Right-wing contemporary art is almost non-existent. It has to be invented, fabricated and cultivated. Core values inherent in contemporary art (such as critical thinking, self-questioning, pluralism, empathy, anti-imperialist thinking) do not fit the right-wing agenda. Joanna Warsza describes how the Law and Justice (PiS) government has taken over the most important critical art institutions and media in Poland during its two terms in office (2015-2023). It also significantly raised the cultural budget – but only for a culture that reinforced the myths of the past grandeur, the never-ending victimhood towards Russia and Germany while denying its own colonial and xenophobic mindset. But there always was also light in the darkness: hopeful examples of  a mobilization of the art scene and ways out of the right-wing matrix, including the collective reclaiming of the Polish Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale featuring the Ukrainian Collective Open Group instead of an ill-patriotic painter.