House on roots

Location of Zachęta Projects

curator: Magda Kardasz
cooperation: Pola Gadowska

Vernissage July 31 at 7 p.m.

The acquaintance of Ana Vostruchovaitė and Łukasz Radziszewski, as well as the mutual observation of their work, has been going on for several years.

Ana grew up in Vilnius's Pavilnys district, studied in Warsaw, lives and works in these two cities. Łukasz divides his time between his family village in Podlasie and Warsaw, where he graduated from the local Academy of Fine Arts. “Their places” on the map lie not far from each other. I was also intrigued by some similarities between Ana's painting and the conceptual work of Łukasz, such as drawing inspiration from the locality, analysing the sense of identity, close relations with nature, which is why I came up with the idea of inviting them to create an exhibition in dialogue for the Zachęta Project Site. This is how the House on the Roots project was created.

In the case of both artists, this title speaks of a strong connection with the place where they come from. For Ana, it is primarily a story about complex sources of identity and man as part of nature. Łukasz reflects on the future of his village and family, builds wider social relations based on domestic rituals.

Ana Vostruchovaitė presents paintings, objects and specially woven fabrics for the occasion at the exhibition. Titles such as Sisterhood, Cat Study, View from My Window, Forest Spirit, Black Bread, Digging Season, Bows, Flower in a Pot, Root System — well characterize their intimate atmosphere and almost archetypal subject matter. The paintings on the canvas are made in tasteful, pastel colors. As well as colorful plaster reliefs and jacquard fabrics, because the artist is happy to experiment with deriving paintings from frames. The house and the old district of Vilnius, full of wild greenery, in which she grew up and in which she has a second studio, next to the Warsaw one, is a constant source of inspiration for her. The artist writes about the title of the exhibition: “Roots symbolize a sense of attachment and resourcefulness, but not necessarily to something permanent. They grow widely, their structure is not strictly defined. Therefore, my definition of home based on a constant variable is what shapes my background and way of life. It's not about changing places, that's all. First of all, through the metaphor of winding roots, I express the free nature of building one's own self. I am part of the Vilnius national minority in Lithuania.”

The exhibition also includes Vostruchovaitė's works of a more abstract nature. Most often, organic shapes appear in them. In other compositions, she analyzes the human body from a posthuman perspective as an integral part of nature. A good example is the artist's new painting, in which human figures hide their heads under the mask of a bird, symbolically crossing species boundaries. The artist states: “For the workshop I take nature and multiculturalism close to me. Typical for eastern areas landscape, local vocabulary, customs. Rearranged on canvases and in the form of objects, the postman no longer has a dominant role in the world. It has a fluid identity, is affected by digitization, and it might seem like it's “overflowing” into plants and back again. Exploring the family grounds, I look at the details of life that bring our everyday life closer, sometimes telling specific stories. Through my work, I ask myself what identity really is. Perhaps it is our own creation.”

Łukasz Radziszewski has for some time shifted his interest from creating artifacts to customs, traditions, because it is with them that his private sense of familiarity is associated. Since 2016, he continues the Zaczyn campaign — he distributes century-old bread sourdough to the participants of meetings/workshops and teaches them how to bake bread. It builds community around a daily, domestic ritual. At the exhibition in MPZ, he implements a new activity with a similar unifying character: he teaches invited guests the fading skill of planing boats from bark. This custom was passed on in his native lands (probably not only there) from father to son/child. The boat was usually then launched into the water and sailed away into the unknown. For Łukasz Radziszewski, this gesture is also a learning of distance, taming after loss. Bark is an incredibly beautiful and moldable material. In the Zachęta Project Site, the artist will present a composition from boats created during workshops in his family village Karczmisko and a festival in Podlasie Gródek. Suspended in rows on the wall of the boat, in various shades of bronze, they resemble the rulers of some original cuneiform script or rune. This composition is accompanied by film impressions documenting the process of carving boats and the formation of a community during these meetings. An integral part of Radziszewski's presentation at the exhibition will be boat workshops conducted by himself and friends of artists from various fields.

The Warsaw side of Łukasz Radziszewski's identity is metaphorically represented by spatial collages of public transport tickets compulsively collected by him and his friends. The artist used silver hologram stripes with the inscription “Warsaw” to create objects in the shape of branches and plants. He calls them “emblems of sensitivity formed in Warsaw”. The presentation is completed by a collage made from the same strips. An attentive viewer will notice that they are arranged in the inscription “Marinetti”. Radziszewski ironically evokes the name of Italian futurist Tommas Marinetti, fascinated by fascism, whom he calls “the enemy of local identities”.

The House of Roots is an exhibition of two artists using extremely different means of expression to create works with similar pronunciation. Their works convince us that local identity can be a foothold, a navigation tool in today's turbulent times.

Magda Kardasz