Paintings

My paintings are visual arguments, a way to think and feel myself into the topic of migration and "contaminated landscapes". Austrian writer and translator Martin Pollack coined this term to describe areas of Eastern and Central Europe that have been shaped by a violent history. From this perspective, landscapes are not sentimental retreats, but living archives of memory. The forests that characterise many of these landscapes appear as complex symbolic-material ecosystems – as witnesses to history, sometimes as accomplices, and often as places of refuge.

Migration is understood here as a universal human condition and as a biographical/political necessity. I am interested in personal stories of migration from East and South to West and North, and in the migratory culture that develops on the peripheries of capitalist centres. I base my paintings mainly on family photos sent to me by my father, who emigrated from Poland to the USA in the 80s. The state of being in-between cultures and places and maintaining long-distance relationships is what I call the migratory condition, which shapes the life possibilities of individuals, forms of familiality, and the character of entire societies. I understand migration as a point of arrival rather than a temporary state, as a fluid, queer identity, and as a statement.

Contaminated landscapes are understood here as something you take with you on your journey while migrating; something that is rooted in your carnal identity and corporeality, that you cannot lose while assimilating and integrating. These landscapes that haunt you.

Previous exhibitions:
"KRES/Borderlands" at Galeria WY in Łódź

WIOSNA/VOR at Sláturhúsið in Egilsstaðir, Iceland

"FERNBEZIEHUNGEN" at KVOST in Berlin

"From the East to the East" Gallery Lectwo in Poznan.

"Daleko stąd / Far Away From Here" with Patryk Różycki at the WY Gallery in Łodź, Poland.

Some of my older paintings under: Archive (2005-2011).