Sława Harasymowicz, from the series 'Idle, Abusive, Unruly' 2013, drawing on paper, 30x34cm
A Tourist in Other People’s Reality project brings together three artists: Cecilia Bonilla (Uruguay/Sweden), Sława Harasymowicz (Poland) and Joanna Rajkowska (Poland), who reveal invisible, missing and fragmented narratives from past lives, and project fictive outcomes from within the interstices of history
Investigating the archives of Vestry House, a local museum and former workhouse in London, the artists work in video, sound and assemblage to examine and re-imagine the archive and to explore a divisive history and its political and social pretexts. The diverse body of work from Bonilla, Harasymowicz and Rajkowska is united by an impulse to reconstructions of the past and interpretations of the present.
Activating layers of meaning from the passive realm of archival lore, the artists employ exposure, adjustment, manipulation, juxtaposition, re-creation, re-enactment and layering. The voiceless are brought to life, and the marginalised take centre stage in a provocative gesture, which serves as a platform for dialogue in the present.
The exhibition, curated by Olga Ovenden, challenges political and social implications embedded in the archive as a source of knowledge, and willfully disturbs the "true" history of Vestry House by creating openings towards the fictional. The desire for a material trace of human beings is set against the physical emptiness of what is actually left. With this premise in mind, the exhibition stages a spectacle of frustration and coercion carefully, orchestrated by the three artists.
The opening night of the exhibit, the 14th of June, features a collaborative performance by Joanna Rajkowska and Aleksandra Kozioł, who performs songs using the so-called "white voice" technique typical of Central and Eastern Europe folk-music culture. This archaic "scream-singing" (śpiewokrzyk in Polish) is a technique where air is being pushed slowly by the diaphragm and the throat stays completely open. Using all the body's resources as membranes, the singer gives the sound maximum clarity and strength, while the "white voice" produces a strong, raw and "dirty" sound.
Aleksandra Kozioł works in genres including painting, installation, film and performance, and incorporates the "white voice" technique in her artistic practice. Her singing collaborations include participation in the Days of Traditional Music – Pograjka in Łódź, and she is a member of a group specialising in traditional singing, Miejskie Darcie Pierza / City Goose-plucking, and a member of Wielki Chór Chorei / Chorea Theatre Great Choir.
After receiving an MA from the Royal College of Art in London (2006), Sława Harasymowicz is currently working towards a practice-based PhD in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. Harasymowicz uses drawing, print, lens-based media and installation as processes to express and test conditions of memory and trauma, and the complex relationships between "history", "memory", "truth" and "representation". Her work tracks specific fragments of history, partial memory and personal anecdote, where autobiography acts as a navigational tool, a place of reference and examination. Her solo exhibitions include Wolf Man, hosted by the Freud Museum, London (2012), accompanied by the publication of a graphic novel based on Freud's Wolf Man case study (2012). She is scheduled to have a solo show at the Ethnographic Museum in Kraków in 2014. Harasymowicz won the Arts Foundation Fellowship in 2008, the Victoria and Albert Museum Illustration Award in 2009, and in 2010 she was a member of the Award's jury.
Joanna Rajkowska is an acknowledged Polish artist who works mostly in public and urban spaces. She produces objects, architectural projects, geological fantasies, excavation sites and ephemeral actions as part of her widely discussed public projects. Many have not been realised, but they function as collective utopias. Rajkowska's versatility lies in her ability to adapt the language of her artistic statement to the requirements of the message addressed to the viewer. Her work is characterised by a generous dose of irony as well as a certain distance from the issues it tackles. Apart from numerous prestigious commissions, Rajkowska has creatd a partisan public projects, most notably Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue (2002) in Warsaw, known as the Warsaw palm tree. The monograph book of her work, Where the Beast Is Buried, is scheduled for release from Zero Books in the summer 2013. Joanna Rajkowska is currently based in London.
Song From the Workhouse
A performance by Joanna Rajkowska in collaboration with Aleksandra Kozioł
A Tourist in Other People’s Reality exhibition
Vestry House Museum
Vestry Road Walthamstow
London E17 9NH
Private view
Friday 14 June, 6-9 pm
FREE
Editor: Paulina Schlosser, source: http://www.polishculture.org.uk, press release