In 2015, Brazilian artist Giselle Beiguelman headed out on a journey across Poland in search of her own past. The result of this endeavour is an exhibition hosted by the Galpão VB gallery in São Paulo, organised by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of its programme of presentations of Polish culture across Brazil.
The exhibition is a result of the artist’s study trip to Poland in 2015. Born into a Polish-Jewish family, Giselle Beiguelman set out to visit the homeland of her grandparents, who fled Poland after World War I. The journey was part of Beiguelman’s search for her own past. Looking at the works presented at the Galpão VB, one can discern various familiar Polish views. There is the special red-and-white mini bus, transporting tourists to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, as well as the Wieliczka salt mine, the wooden 19th-century houses near the city of Łódź, Jewish cemeteries in Przemyśl and Bobrowniki, a former ghetto area in Dęblin, and landscapes of the Karpaty region. Giselle Beiguelman looks at her own history, and searches for images and memories, as well as artefacts and impressions of her journey across her homeland. The organisers explain:
The artist is, in a way, here a traveller in the land of memories – she sets out into the land of her ancestors in order to question herself, to examine landscapes, as well as her own past, with the goal of creating a lyrically charged fraction out of the stiff imagery of the whole. She works with issues connected to memory and identity, as she draws on her own experience of a journey across Poland.
Three works created by Beiguelman during her visit to Poland are exhibited as part of the show. Quanto pesa uma nuvem? (How Heavy is a Cloud) is a film and photographic installation that documents the artist’s journey from Kraków to Oświęcim in thick fog. Perturbadoramente familiar (Disturbingly Familiar) is a sound installation with 16 postcards, in the form of a travel-diary from her trips across Poland. Perguntas às pedras [Série 3] (Ask the Stones [Series #3]) are stamps with questions which evoke the artist’s journey as well as the notions of identity and memory.