POLAND BE MY HEALTH
Installation
01:01 min sound video on loop, projected on banner with writing (acrylic on fabric), nest made of birch, wooden folk storks
This installation reflects and analyze Polish collective MEMORY, IMAGERY, and NOSTALGIA, by relating it to the canonical Polish visual art and literature. Title refers to the most admitted compulsory text of Invocation (from the epic poem Sir Thaddeus) written by Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, while the motive of birds was used by Polish painter Józef Chełmoński in his Storks – one of the most recognizable, valued, and adored image in Polish art. The birds themselves are strong part of collective imagery of the nation to the point of being a symbol of Poland, which may be also connected with white and red colours dominating their appearance.
The work refers to a very present political situation in Poland (specifically, but not only, to the governmental and societal reaction on Refugee Crisis) and raises a problematic issues of LINGUISTIC NARRATION as the appropriation of public and individual understanding – when language is based on simplifying and reducing often extremely complex matters to a one way of viewing them. That narration is tend to “explain” to the nation the way it should understand its own history, culture, and tradition.
It is a powerful tool as we can mainly understand things by naming them and by imagine them through words.
Centrala Gallery, Birmingham 2016
Spokojna Gallery, Warsaw 2022 – more