Collection

Agnieszka Kalinowska’s Heavy Water installation consists of forty clay jugs, replicas of ancient vases from Persia, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq. On the surface of the vessels, Kalinowska has placed schematic figures of people fleeing or hiding, directly referencing the current issue of refugees and mass migration. The direct inspiration for the drawings comes from the road sign known as Immigrant Crossing, introduced after a series of over one hundred fatal accidents involving migrants that occurred on the interstate highway at the U.S.–Mexico border between 1987 and 1990.

By using the form of vessels as archaeological finds, Kalinowska links the issue of contemporary migration to the history of humanity, emphasizing that water and food vessels are key markers in the study of human displacement. The artist highlights the metaphorical significance of water – its weight, both physical and existential. This work addresses universal issues related to the struggle for survival, dignity, and the physical and social boundaries encountered by marginalized individuals.

In Welcome, the artist addresses the hospitality of developed countries and how this concept has recently devalued. The title of the work is in English — a global language, or the language of globalization, which was meant to enable the understanding between cultures and countries. The dishonesty and inauthenticity of this hospitality has been exposed many times, most recently due to the ongoing refugee crisis. Deconstructing the meaning of the word welcome is literally translated into the deconstruction of the form. The distorted, corroded designate of hospitality reflects the completely distorted condition of this concept. The weed entangled in the structure appears like an unwanted guest among a farmer’s crops. On the other hand, ‘weed’ is a relative term, as depending on where it grows, it may or may not be a desired plant, or it may even become a protected plant. Similarly, the word welcome, depending on the political situation and time, may be a diplomatic refrain or an empty slogan facing visitors from other countries.

The video work Silence of Taming depicts the gradual feminization of the male body. Shot in 2005, the film is an intimate video documentation of the preparations and the moment of transformation, moving beyond the existing identity and cultural belonging. The final metamorphosis was based on an in-depth study of Japanese culture and customs, everyday meetings and conversations, and subtle observations of rituals. It depicts the process of the artist’s transformation into a character with a completely different cultural experience. Karmasz always chooses to represent women, performing a visual transgression, deconstructing identity, and examining cultural changes and the fluidity of ethnic borders in the globalized world.

Self-portrait. Geisha II is part of a series entitled Hybrydy [Hybrids], inspired by the experience he gained while studying at Joshibi University of Art and Design in Japan. The stay at this all-female school, Japan’s oldest private art college, had a strong influence on artist’s work.  Karmasz refers to unique artistic transgressions, and is interested in giving up personal cultural and linguistic features, as well as social and ethnic experiences to which we are accustomed and thanks to which we feel safe, and instead entering a different, new and unknown cultural sphere embedded in different realities.

The process of the feminization of the male body, that socially and culturally broadens the boundaries of gender identity dependent on geographic, historical and political conditions, is equally important here.

From the start of their joint creative practice, Karska / Went have been interested in forgotten and abandoned spaces where the hustle and bustle of human activity has gone or not yet appeared.

Młyniska is a two-channel video juxtaposing the images of two kinds of urban space: a park, and industrial architecture. The films were made in the eponymous Gdańsk district combining these two different landscape formations. The work refers to architectural changes and shows the artists' fascination with the transformation of areas displaced by industry, and imultaneously their belief in the need to protect our heritage.

photos: Bartosz Bieniek, editing: Irena Siedlar, sound: Marcin Zieliński, producer: Olga Bieniek

From the start of their joint creative practice, Karska/Went have been interested in forgotten and abandoned spaces where the hustle and bustle of human activity has gone or not yet appeared.

In the Miastoprojekt / The City Project series, they documented the appearance of a fleeting installation, a model of an imaginary city built of sugar cubes on wet sand. The location of this project was not accidental: the Gdańsk Shipyard, the cradle of Solidarity, once a symbol of the power of coastal industry, gradually deteriorated since the 1990s. Since 2000, this area has been transforming from an industrial to an urban district deprived of context and heritage.

The City Project exposes modernism's utopian ideas – promising, and yet inhumane. In Gdańsk, examples of this are the large districts of Przymorze, Zaspa and Żabianka, which, although located with access to the sea, overpower with their lack of individualism.

Burying Books was a planned, deliberate action, inspired by Granary Island – a kind of no man’s land in a country without public space. Klaman called Granary Island ‘ex-territorial’ – a kind of space beyond the jurisdiction of power and ideology. However, he did not carry out archaeological excavations or grew nostalgic for the traces of history. Klaman inverted the archaeological activity – instead of discovering, he buried, disturbing the chronology of the layers.

Both the gesture of burying books and the accompanying Inverted Archaeology artistic manifesto seem to be crucial for Klaman’s 1980s art, but also influence his later practice – different in form and created in a completely different political and artistic and institutional context. The point is not to know for sure what happened in the past and how the past can be depicted, but to know how to disrupt the order of things, infuse them with meaning and insert oneself there without becoming history’s hostage.

In many of his works, Grzegorz Klaman refers to the current changes to employment regulations, the erosion of the myth of Solidarity and alternative historical narratives. It deals with the effects of the Polish transformation, the pros and cons of modernization, economic exclusion and various ideas regarding the future of post-industrial regions.

In Solidarity Guerilla, the artist tells a story about a hypothetical anarchist quasi-terrorist organization that could arise in Silesia as a result of a rebellion against the methods of privatization of large industry, restructuring and closing down mines, and finally the way in which the entire area – workplaces and post-industrial cities – was destroyed. Klaman creates a vision of a revolt that might arise in the coming years. He derived his idea from observing current events in Silesia, supported by the memory of the experiences of Great Britain, where, as a result of Margaret Thatcher's actions in 1985, nearly two hundred and thirty thousand miners lost their jobs, one hundred and sixty coal mines were closed down, and the rest were privatized.\

Co-funded by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund, a state-designated special-purpose fund, as part of the task: Development of the Contemporary Art Collection of the National Museum in Gdańsk.

In many of his works, Grzegorz Klaman refers to the current changes to employment regulations, the erosion of the myth of Solidarity and alternative historical narratives. It deals with the effects of the Polish transformation, the pros and cons of modernization, economic exclusion and various ideas regarding the future of post-industrial regions.

In Solidarity Guerilla, the artist tells a story about a hypothetical anarchist quasi-terrorist organization that could arise in Silesia as a result of a rebellion against the methods of privatization of large industry, restructuring and closing down mines, and finally the way in which the entire area – workplaces and post-industrial cities – was destroyed. Klaman creates a vision of a revolt that might arise in the coming years. He derived his idea from observing current events in Silesia, supported by the memory of the experiences of Great Britain, where, as a result of Margaret Thatcher's actions in 1985, nearly two hundred and thirty thousand miners lost their jobs, one hundred and sixty coal mines were closed down, and the rest were privatized.

Co-funded by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund, a state-designated special-purpose fund, as part of the task: Development of the Contemporary Art Collection of the National Museum in Gdańsk.

Line of Fire is a work that – alongside Burying Books and his activities on the city’s modern-day fortifications – clearly indicates Klaman’s fascination with land art. It is motivated by the need to react to the abandoned, but architecturally and historically valuable spaces in Gdańsk and stems from the act of discovering new, non-institutional spaces for art, testing the limits of what is possible in the absence of conditions for unrestricted action within the public space.

Klaman’s explorations sought to address the question of space in a way that would go beyond the dominant environmental aesthetics of the time. The northern part of Granary Island, today built up with residential buildings and hotels, was a gaping wound since the end of WWII, and the dramatic remains of the burnt granaries provided the backdrop to Klaman’s activities. The latter, not unlike projects carried out together with Kazimierz Kowalczyk on the modern-day fortifications in Gdańsk (drawings in the snow, drawings made of planks), were unlike anything else created in Poland at that time.

The work was created on Granary Island located on the Motława River, in the centre of Gdańsk, where in the second half of the 1980s and the first years of the following decade, Klaman ran the open-air Wyspa Gallery. Man Carrying a Turtle is the last in a series of figurative wooden sculptures made by the artist in 1985–1989. These sculptures, sometimes embedded directly on the Island in the ruins of former granaries, were a form of intervention in the neglected and forgotten part of the city. Such interventions were characteristic of Klaman’s work in the 1980s. The historical context in which they were created influenced their brutal aesthetics, reminiscent of skinning the body. Klaman’s new-expressionist sculptures symbolically reflect the position of an individual confronting martial law, which dramatic events were felt particularly strong in Gdańsk.

Co-funded by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund, a state-designated special-purpose fund, as part of the task: Development of the Contemporary Art Collection of the National Museum in Gdańsk.