SAD* I WON’T BUILD A BETTER WORLD
*whenever an asterisk appears in the text it denominates a word form changed in Polish version of the text into gender neutral
AGATA ZBYLUT
ANNA BIELAWSKA, PIOTR MICHALSKI, NATALIA SARA SKORUPA, KAMIL WINNICKI
exhibition within the framework of the ‘Women's Work Never Ends’ project
and part of Łódź of Many Cultures Festival
‘Sad* I Won't Build a Better World’ was created in collaboration with Agata Zbylut. It is accompanied by exhibitions by young artists and designers - Anna Bielawska, Piotr Michalski, Natalia Sara Skorupa, Kamil Winnicki - as well as interviews on their relations with drag. The exhibition presents interdisciplinary activities involving independent artists, including those who belong to cultural minorities.
This project draws on the history of women textile workers - Polish, German, Czech, Russian, Jewish. Women who, by choosing to work in factories, were able to consciously liberate themselves from disempowerment or the social role assigned to them. They fought against existing class and identity differences so that they could become creators of micro-histories and herstories – making their own choices in every sphere of life.
Among a variety of topics addressed by Agata Zbylut in her works are the many social roles assigned to women. She discusses it in her series of photographs ‘Most Shocking Is Not How Shocked You Are Now, but How Unshocked You Will Be in the Future’ (60 x 47 cm, 2017) presented at the Nuremberg House in Krakow on the 8th of March, on the occasion of the International Women's Day. The artist's photographs depicting a series of physical exercises performed on a kitchen table vividly indicate the place of a woman in her role as a cook. However, the author gives the typical busy daily female routine a completely different perspective, that of caring for a healthy body.
Agata Zbylut reminds us that all domestic chores were attributed to women and assumed to be free labour. This thought is a continuation of the approach taken by the American writer and feminist Naomi Wolf, who in her book The Beauty Myth refers to, so to speak, the old formula of the so-called ‘skilled economists’ postulating the closing of the wage gap, ultimately taking place also at the expense of women's labour.
The value of work and who performs it are particularly important for generations X, Y, Z. Since the 1980s in the USA and since the 1990s in Poland, many actors have emerged who work for LGBT+ community. Social mobilisation against heteronormativity is ongoing. However, it is not sufficiently visible and equal in daily actions both at home and in the labour market. What do reports and statistics say? One in three LGBT+ people in Poland is affected by discrimination in the workplace , and one in four hides their identity at work . According to Forbes.pl , non-binary pronouns in CVs reduce employability. In fact, since 2015, these statistics have either changed little or not at all. According to the Labour Code in Poland - the only document that provides effective protection for LGBT+ individuals against discrimination - companies and organisations should undertake to create an anti-discrimination policy to build relationships and cooperation and strengthen communities through concrete actions. An example of good practice in this respect is the diversity policy, i.e. the introduction of new employment rights that, for example, ensure that all employees have the same number of days off regardless of the type of relationship they are in. Despite these measures, the legal and social situation of LGBT+ community is still very difficult in Poland. According to an ILGA-Europe ranking measuring the level of equality for LGBT+ people in European countries in the last four editions, Poland ranked last in the EU .
Together with the invited representatives of Millenials and Gen Z, Zbylut performs a certain reshaping of cultural norms, drawing attention to how body and identity can be perceived simultaneously. The works show how one can still be tempted to hide some relationships and sanctify the existence of the ‘right’ ones, and to give up one’s eroticism. The first choices in childhood related to the personal development of both body and spirit seem to be crucial in making changes. Following this thesis Zbylut notes that both she and Poland's most famous drag queen, the prematurely deceased Kim Lee, behaved, played and dressed similarly when they were children.
As part of the exhibition “Kim Lee. Królowa Warszawy” (Kim Lee. Queen of Warsaw) shown in Warsaw's Wola Museum, Agata Zbylut created the “Wszystkie jesteśmy trochę drag” (There’s a Bit of Drag in Each of Us) project, making a photographic archive of Kim Lee's clothes. The artist's tribute to drag is a sewn cape with the names and nicknames of those characters Kim Lee performed on stage and those people for whom she herself was an inspiration.
What is worth remembering are the historical processes, places and women who paved the way for the social development of femininity and identity, and allowed the development of a new creative social class with multicultural competences such as self-awareness, mindfulness, resilience or courage. It is they - women, activists, sensitive and empathetic - who have been doing the work - not so much professional work, but ‘subject’ work, which has been a vector of emancipation and has become a sign of the times, marking a new perspective on identity. The extent of this work currently done not only by women, but also by men, transgender, LGBT+ and non-binary persons should not be strictly related to gender which has become a relative concept. Taking into account transcultural changes and still excluded minorities like queer people, which re-evaluate phenomena such as migration, origin, religion, identity - a solidarity-based sense of power of the individual is put on a pedestal.
Michel Foucault pointed to the importance of the question of the human - especially female - body and corporeality. The body-power relationship is a broad issue reaching from the familial sphere to the medical and political spheres. If Foucault pointed out that the modern state appropriates the right to direct lives (and experiences) of the body, it also means that the body as a subject is and will continue to be an independent social particle.
Magdalena Komborska-Łączna
The words patriarchy, feminism and queer are not simply nouns denoting parts of our reality. They are treated as statements and their meaning changes depending on who uses them. Their colloquial interpretation is often misleading and emotionally charged. Contemporary feminism is not against men - quite the contrary. It allows them to realise themselves in areas hitherto inaccessible to them, and queer does not threaten the traditional family, but helps us to accept our sometimes ‘imperfect’ bodies and to live in harmony with them. Contrary to what many people intuitively imagine, equal relationships - even heterosexual ones - are threatened precisely by patriarchy as a violent system that subordinates the weak to the strong. The weaker ones simply log out of it. We see this clearly in the numbers, when the tightening of anti-abortion laws reduces fertility rates instead of increasing them, and non-heteronormative people, if they have the opportunity, leave their towns and villages, heading for agglomerations that are safer for them. They take their creativity and useful skills elsewhere.
The first stage is always to recognise violence when we realise that what was considered ‘natural’ is actually not so. There is nothing natural about exploiting unpaid or low-paid labour of people because of their gender, race or origin. There is nothing natural about appropriating other people's bodies. There is nothing natural in enforcing patriarchal patterns concerning appearance or behaviour. On the one hand, what can be natural about walking around in stilettos, dying one's hair or cutting and stretching one's skin? And on the other hand, what could be more natural than having fun, even if it is fun through dress or behaviour?
SAD* I WON’T BUILD A BETTER WORLD is an exhibition composed of works that analyse reality and take a critical look at it. When Magda Komborska-Łączna invited me to prepare it at the Academic Design Centre, I asked for the opportunity to invite students and graduates from the Studio of Photography and Post-Artistic Activities, which I run at the Academy of Art in Szczecin. Analysis and critical examination of reality is an ongoing practice in this unit. Together, we create art that engages, creates dialogue and allows us to understand the mechanisms we are sometimes unknowingly subjected to. Together we are stronger. A sense of community, of understanding gives power and brings people back their smile, helping to rebuild the world piece by piece to make it a better place. It sounds trite, but this is what ‘politics of prefiguration’ is all about: ‘if you embody what you aspire to, you have already succeeded. That is to say, if your activism is already democratic, peaceful, creative, then in one small corner of the world these things have triumphed’ .
The exhibition features Anna Bielawska, Piotr Michalski, Natalia Sara Skorupa and Kamil Winnicki.
I also invited Aleksandr* Demianiuk with a project that was to be her thesis - and although it was completed, Ola never decided to show it. The heteronormative pressure is still too great. Just as you won't find Kamil Winnicki's project on social media. As part of his master's thesis, he photographed himself with his partner in one of Szczecin's churches, to which Kamil's partner as an organist had the keys. The photos are nude, although this nudity is discreet. Nevertheless, the session ended with the confiscation of the memory card by the parish priest, and the project was carried out in a church on the other side of the Oder, in Bröllin, Germany. Kamil juxtaposes the photos from the church with documentation of the family cellar, where more and more ‘holy pictures’ landed every year. His relatives, seeing that the Catholic Church did not accept Kamil in all his being, gradually got rid of the images of saints from the walls. Fortunately, in this case it was the ‘saints’ who ended up between the sprouting onions and the potatoes. Not all stories end so well.
The Polish mentality also proved to prevail over Natalia Sara Skorupa's project - a pack of erotic playing cards. The inspiration came from cards brought back from Ukraine years ago. Natalia, working with Kornel Kamasz, repeated the poses and gestures, but instead of cis girls there is a queer boy on the cards. She tried to print the cards in Poland at print shops that produce erotic cards, but as soon as she sent the files, it proved impossible. Her money was refunded and the print shops baled out. Eventually, she sent them to a printer in Germany. Patriarchy takes pleasure in looking at and taking possession of young women's bodies, but cannot stand the sight and body of a queer man.
Cultural norms are also revised in the beautiful performance and its video documentation prepared by Ania Bielawska. Taking her cue from Eastern rituals of eating sushi served on the bodies of naked young women, Ania arranges a meal on herself and eats it sensually. Herring, red onions, roasted garlic, kimchi, all look phenomenal, although they are certainly not date food. Their sharp smell rules out closeness. This magnificent feast has only one heroine and it serves only her. The naked female body, which in patriarchal iconography is subordinated to the male gaze and pleasure, here focuses on its own satisfaction and benefits. Unlike in a typical commercial imagery, the author seduces our senses and does not allow us to forget about her. Ania's body serves her pleasure and interests. We can only look at it and participate in the feast on her terms, as people passively observing and admiring the ritual.
Piotr Michalski's work is the closest to the project I have prepared myself. It touches on the same point in the past. When Piotr was a boy, his family owned a costume rental shop. His mum used to dress him up for photographs that promoted particular costumes. Dozens of photographs in which he posed as a dog, a wizard or a princess. Years later, Piotr returns to the bags in which the unsold costumes were packed, and together with his Mum they pose in a session organised in the fabulous setting of an allotment garden. They revisit gestures from the past and have as much fun together as they did twenty years earlier.
The same sentiment accompanied me and Kim Lee. Reading her interviews and biography, I realised that we had behaved similarly when we were a few years old. We both, when no one was looking at us, would put on our mothers' outfits and drape scarves over our bodies. It was just that she was a boy raised in Hanoi, and I was a small town girl raised in communist Poland. We both eventually ended up in the same town and had the opportunity to get to know each other. We both contracted covid, unfortunately for Kim Lee it was a fatal disease. I prepared a work that is another tribute to this remarkable person. Using her wardrobe, I will sew a cape that, on the one hand, will be the total sum of the female characters that fascinated Kim Lee and that she copied in her drag performances, and on the other hand, I will put the names and nicknames of those people for whom - like for me - she was extraordinary, fascinating, inspiring and changed our lives at least a little bit for the better.
Agata Zbylut
Authors
Agata Zbylut, Anna Bielawska, Piotr Michalski, Natalia Sara Skorupa, Kamil Winnicki
Visual identification
Beata Nikolajczyk-Miniak
Curator
Magdalena Komborska-Łączna
Opening
13 September, 18.00 with guided tour, POLISH SUSHI performance by Anna Bielawska, organ performance by Piotr Cholewa
Finissage
11 October, 6 p.m. with a guided tour and meeting with the artist, performance by Natalia Sara Skorupa.
During the finissage, we inviteviewers to record short statements about what drag means to them. This material will be used in future presentation of the project NAJPIĘKNIEJSZE WARSZAWIANKI TO PRZYJEZDNE (THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WARSAWIAN WOMEN ARE THE INCOMERS).
Programme accompanying the exhibition
workshops by Paweł Kaźmierowski
October 10th, 1.00 – 3.30 p.m., 4.00 – 6.30 p.m.
Exhibition dates
13.09 - 16.10.2024 r.
Place
P0_Academic Centre of Design
13/15 Księży Młyn Street, Łódź
FREE ENTRY
Organisers
Academic Design Centre, the Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts Łódź, Design Fields Association
Media partners
SZUM magazine, Trójka - Program Trzeci Polskiego Radia, Presto magazine
The ‘Women's Work Never Ends’ project was co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Fund for the Promotion of Culture.