Collection

Hanna Nowicka’s Scapegoat is a battered, worn-out school sports instrument. Over its leather seat, the artist has thrown a pile of flesh-coloured vulcanized rubber with a plump and sometimes smooth surface resembling human skin. It makes such a realistic impression that it is difficult to control the urge to touch it.

A scapegoat is an innocent victim who in ancient cultures accepted and carried the sins and guilt of the community while simultaneously being excluded from it. In the Judaic tradition, the priest of the temple in Jerusalem, having sprinkled its interior with the blood of the sacrificed bull and goat, selected another one to be led out into a desert or a rocky cliff and carry the guilt of all the people. The ancient Greeks, after selecting a pharmakos — typically a slave, criminal, or a cripple — chased them out of the city so that the plague or defeat would follow. Stigmatization, exclusion, witch-hunts, and hate speech as strategies of action within societies, nations, neighbourhood groups, at universities, schools, offices, and also PE classes, incessantly reproduce this old pattern.

Rubber, next to dust, is a characteristic material used by Nowicka; a substitute for skin. Its velvety surface, the seemingly biological softness of its forms and the colour of flesh, evoke associations with the human body. On the one hand, such layering, covering and revealing individual details of the composition is an expression of the aestheticization of the depiction, but on the other – uncovers deformations, prosthetics, and imperfections. The photographed object is placed between an organic form and an inanimate object, between an emotional experience and a well-thought-out artistic structure.

The warm tones used in the composition of the photograph and the way in which Nowicka arranges linear strips of flesh-coloured material that partially cover and uncover the plane, reveal Nowicka’s painterly experience. By photographing the material that resembles the texture and colour of the skin, the artist evokes associations with corporeality, intimacy, and close interpersonal relations. The amorphous nature of the composition, however, raises anxiety and associations with deformation and destruction. The title of the work clearly indicates the trope of imperfections, suggesting some flaws in the aestheticization of the body and its visual representation.

The 2016 work entitled Ksiądz [The Priest] was inspired by the artist’s childhood memories. The viewer’s attention is drawn to the disappearing figure of a priest who passes by the sketched architecture of modernist blocks. The scene is set against the background of nature, marked with floral motifs and intense colours. Nature and spirituality play an important role in Nowosielska’s painting. Perhaps the artist captured only the moment of doubt and the resulting need for contemplation and silence. This painting can also be understood as a symptom of growing social changes and a critical look at the activities of the Catholic Church, which inevitably become a matter of public discussion, emphasizing the need for a new quality of religious life focused on the spiritual layer. The motif of the retreating priest and the end of a beautiful summer saturated with colours is a clear emphasis on the passing of time and change. Although rather symbolic, it is a clear voice speaking to today’s social changes and struggles for a new quality of public life.

The painting appears to focus on and affirm the expressive presence of the women, and positions them in between the discussion on the propaganda stereotype of female labourers and the material realities of their labour. The artist pays particular attention to representations of women and women's art. She depicts them as active subjects, modifies and interprets their images, placing them in new contexts and across different media. Processing and giving new meanings to art and design involves exploring the history of art but also fashion, whose essence, after all, is presenting particular characters in a certain way.

Anna Orbaczewska’s drawings depict an exhausted, overloaded, impatient woman who is subjected to violence. Thus, traditional cultural tropes are mixed with what is often hidden deep beneath the surface of familial and social relations. The protagonists refer to dramatic female characters from the prose of Günter Grass; their fate was affected by war and social repressions.

Devoted to violence and toxic relations between genders, their expression is completely different from the artist’s easel paintings. They are quick, brutal reports of difficult situations and emotions. The transition from light to darkness and the unspeakable is an extraordinary discovery for the viewer. Against the backdrop of movements such as #metoo and women’s rebellion against cultural and structural violence, Orbaczewska’s voice resonates with particular force, especially when we view her small drawings on paper up close. Recently, her paintings also introduce this expressive, dark atmosphere.

Orbaczewska’s stove emits noticeable heat. The warmth, obviously associated with this kind of device, sits in stark contrast to the content of the decorations. On the one hand, there is a kind of reference to “household” and “home”, which usually brings to mind safety, being together, caring for the family. Following a closer look, we see that this object challenges the culturally entrenched ideals. Orbaczewska’s works, including the object described here, can be considered as a discussion with traditional motifs and forms of art or craftsmanship that strengthen stereotypical images, or even the setups of relationships between men and women, marriage and parenthood. Based on a stark contrast between the carrier of tradition and what challenges it, her work becomes a voice of cultural change, softening the boundaries of roles in relationships and introducing new ways of understanding family relationships.

Works from the Kinderturnen series evoke associations with both Byzantine mosaics and art deco aesthetics. Visually delightful, they simultaneously arouse a sense of horror and uneasy questions about the nature of power – how far can one in exerting control over an individual or a group, in this case children unaware that they are being coached?

The artist was inspired by a training manual regarding enhancing children's physical strength and shaping their thinking to ensure they grow up to be “decent citizens.” Orzechowska reinvents the images of training children, allowing them to play and open up to new kinds of games.

In many of her works, the artist traces the discreet forms of manipulation, that are present for example in social engineering techniques used in therapy and obsessions regarding individual and group actions as ways of building relationships in contemporary society.

Works from the Kinderturnen series evoke associations with both Byzantine mosaics and art deco aesthetics. Visually delightful, they simultaneously arouse a sense of horror and uneasy questions about the nature of power – how far can one in exerting control over an individual or a group, in this case children unaware that they are being coached?

The artist was inspired by a training manual regarding enhancing children's physical strength and shaping their thinking to ensure they grow up to be “decent citizens.” Orzechowska reinvents the images of training children, allowing them to play and open up to new kinds of games.

In many of her works, the artist traces the discreet forms of manipulation, that are present for example in social engineering techniques used in therapy and obsessions regarding individual and group actions as ways of building relationships in contemporary society.

Works from the Kinderturnen series evoke associations with both Byzantine mosaics and art deco aesthetics. Visually delightful, they simultaneously arouse a sense of horror and uneasy questions about the nature of power – how far can one in exerting control over an individual or a group, in this case children unaware that they are being coached?

The artist was inspired by a training manual regarding enhancing children's physical strength and shaping their thinking to ensure they grow up to be “decent citizens.” Orzechowska reinvents the images of training children, allowing them to play and open up to new kinds of games.

In many of her works, the artist traces the discreet forms of manipulation, that are present for example in social engineering techniques used in therapy and obsessions regarding individual and group actions as ways of building relationships in contemporary society.

The work takes the form of an art book, consisting of various sizes, monochrome collages, abstract pictures resembling sea waves and six literary essays written by Katarzyna Czeczot, Agnieszka Pindera, Jonas Nobel, Stanisław Ruksza, Agnieszka Taborska, and Bartek Zdunek.

The title of the work is based on a contradiction — the final, the ultimate end and simultaneously an eternal repetition of fate. Today, deadline means a final date for completing the project, but in POW camps during the American Civil War — literally it meant the death that awaited after crossing the line / leaving the designated area of a camp. The sea personifies this contradiction or paradoxical logic — the infinity of the horizon but also the end, the risk of death and being lost in the limitless water. Stanisław Ruksza and Katarzyna Czeczot write about the inevitable entanglement of water and death, as well as the mermaid’s song, Fellini’s soprano singer or the creator of an underwater opera — Juliana Snapper. Orzechowska's work is intended to undergo continual changes, and its completion will be marked by the artist's death.

Religious Implant is part of the Projekt Techno-Sakralizacji Kościoła Katolickiego [Techno-Sacralisation of the Catholic Church Project] series. It reflects on contemporary spirituality in the context of technology. The eponymous implant is an electronic stimulator placed under the skin, or in other words a device meant to control the spheres of faith and social life. As such, the piece evokes associations with popular representations of the Risen Christ, further intensified by the backlight from the light box. The relationship between art, technology, and faith offers a critical reflection on the impact of these fields on the singular experiences of both the individual and society.

Another important dimension of the Religious implant is its references to corporeality and mass culture and aesthetics taken from advertisements that are ubiquitous in public life. It speaks of a world dominated by consumerism and commercialization, also in the sacred sphere.

Kisieland consists of several independent elements: a colour video and an acrylic painting on canvas. The first part is a record of Radziszewski’s meeting with Ryszard Kisiel, an amateur artist from Gdańsk, a pioneer of the gay culture in Poland. The second part of the work is a painting interpretation of Indianka-Szamanka [Indian-Shaman], one of many photographs documenting Kisiel’s performative activities at the turn of 1985 and 1986.

Kisieland fully illustrates not just the field of Karol Radziszewski’s interests, but also the methodology of his work with archives, consisting in queering history, norms, and institutions.

Kisieland is an attempt to build a relationship between the present and the past, revealing forgotten non-normative threads and heroes. Pointing to historical continuity thus becomes a performative activity – it helps to identify and construct the identity of the contemporary queer community. For Radziszewski, the queer archive is an anti-ethnographic, fluid creation that complements and verifies normative narratives, but which, above all, has emancipatory potential.