Between the political thaw of 1955 and the collapse of the socialist project in 1989, the Polish People's Republic developed close, equal relations with many decolonizing countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. This was not solely the result of Cold War expansion and competition between political camps. However, socialist globalization, although based on the ideals of left-wing internationalism, also brought tangible benefits to the country rebuilding itself after the war. It was both a long and difficult process of establishing institutions and of Poles developing and learning a new, anti-colonial, non-racist language of international cooperation. Cegielski will illustrate this through three artistic exhibitions he is curating. They arose and are being developed based on scholarly work with forgotten archives from Poland, India, Ghana, and Iraq.

Max Cegielski is a writer, curator, and researcher, who has authored several novels and works of non-fiction. As a curator, he developed Sklep Polsko-Indyjski/Prince Polonia (co-curated with Janek Simon), which has been presented at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Clark House Initiative in Mumbai, and TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin (2017–2018). He is currently collaborating with Simon on the research project and exhibition One Man Does Not Rule a Nation, which explores Polish–Ghanaian relations in the 1960s and has been presented at the Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts, TRAFO Szczecin, FCA Ghana, Red Clay Studio in Tamale, and the Museum of African Art in Belgrade.
He is a member of the Interdisciplinary Research Group "Socialist Poland and the Global South" at the Polish Academy of Sciences.

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