Photo-objects: mix media - metal, digital photography.

Melting in the darkness of concrete and the brightness of architectural-migratory space. Victim and heroes of the humanity. People in modern caves. The apocalyptic vision of the transition between what belongs to man and what belongs to nature. The series of photographs “The Passage” is a creative slump, which is to set the boundaries between the author’s interpretation of reality and copying the existing moment. 

The Passage

A multimedia installation of a performative nature.
The installation “Next”  is accomplished as a part of creative activities in the art field and includes seeking for self-identity in reference to the human body, mainly considering one’s own image. 

Body, as a memory medium is embedded in a performative, multi-threaded experience, without excluding digital memory, material objects, and individual elements like multiplied digital portrait, the real character of the author creates the real contemporary reality. 

According to Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, the actor is a work and for it to occur it is necessary for the interactor to be present. Interaction, created over time, takes place on spiritual as well as on emotional levels, extended through mobile phone networks containing communicators of modern voice commands: “start:, “stop”, “next” which activate contents of SMS, e-mail, notes, and android area. This means to bring the recipient and viewer closer to the relation between both sides of the performance. The relationship between the creator and the recipient refers to the mutual memory, concerns man and his carnality, relation s transmitted by body onto external situations and diversely understood processes occurring inside it are being examined. 

Although the entire installation encourages physicality and contact, it is not allowed. 

In 2018, I created an artistic manifesto called “Damy radę” (Eng. Translation can be: “We’ll manage”, “We can handle”, “We shall overcome” - and I did not choose that translation accidentally). The Polish magazine, Tajniki Polityki, noted in an article entitled “How to win an election,” that, “While a political program is an analysis, a slogan is a synthesis” (link). The authors note that meaning and value of common words are likely to change when spoken by a prominent politician. A good slogan creates a powerful force that allures voters to believe in a particular candidate.

My 2018 project for the Light Move Festival in Lodz, Poland analyzed the slogan “Damy Radę” used by Beata Szydlo, a potential candidate for Prime Minister of the Law and Justice Party. My work explored the shifting meanings of the slogan “Damy radę,” by shaping them into a large neon sign and accompanying the sign with recordings of speeches and sounds deeply rooted in Polish modern history. In this new setting, the sign quickly became an attractive background for spectators to take numerous selfies and group photos while re-imagining their own meanings of “we shall overcome” Whatever problems the viewers were facing, they felt that, for sure, “ we shall overcome  .”

The project forces us to see the problems of the world in a new light. In converting a political slogan to a neon sign, I realized that I was taking an important voice and simply saying “we shall overcome.” These keywords have a strong emotional charge that inspired spectators to feel unity and concern for the common good. As opposite as can be to a Polish campaign slogan from 2017/2018, the neon sign “Damy Radę” still attracts many as it did during the festival when many took pictures and uploaded them to social media.
 
The project is not only a sociological and artistic one-time action, but it adds new voices in response to the world events into which we are thrown whether it be threats to democracy, the pandemic, women’s rights, LGBTQ, or BLM. That is why I decided to transfer this artistic gesture from Poland to the USA, and relate.

July 2020, the “WE SHALL OVERCOME” slogan painted on a heavy wooden beam seen the light of day in the USA. I covered a route of 2,7 miles through the streets of Boston, MA (from Museum of Fine Arts, across The Emancipation Memorial, to Samuel Adams Statue) carrying this 15-kilo inscription as part of the Black Lives Matter campaign. The symbolism that I adopt throughout this action has a religious subtext. As a slight woman, carrying this heavy beam will allow me to experience suffering and, I hope, engender astonishment and perhaps even anger in passersby. My aim is to signify that I carry HOPE. I carried this weight to identify with the pain of everyone in this difficult situation but that encourage the message “WE SHALL OVERCOME.”

Damy Radę / We shall overcome. 

The series of nine paintings recalling various acts marked as apostasies: social type - dance and music as a temptation, political type – heroic struggle during the January Uprising in Poland (1863), national type – expats looking for a better life, mythological type - Adam and Eve’s escape from God’s paradise, religious type – apostasy. The definition of betrayal derives from the thread of reality, history, and literature.
Titles of pictures complement their composition by helping to recognize the kind of apostasy. They add understanding to a chaotic world of collected forms and shapes.

Besides, the titles express my attitude towards meaning of the word betrayal – grotesque, absurd, and often sarcastic. The relationship between text and image is an attempt to find the answer to the question: where is the boundary of a painting image and whether text is needed.

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Sylwia Karwowska

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