During the action Waitresses, performed twice (in Warsaw, 2002, and in Stockholm, 2003), Wójcik stood as a waitress next to a customers' table, dressed in an apron that served, at the same time, as the tablecloth, as if, with her obtrusive presence, she wanted to call attention to the labour of the people preparing and serving food.
In 2003 in Berlin the artist, while standing next to a traffic light post, informed the drivers about the current colour of the traffic light, wilfully guarding the order Czerwony, zolty, zielony (Red, Yellow, Green). Another of her ironic performances, Z ziemi wloskiej do Polski... i z powrotem (From Italian Soil to Poland... and back) took place in Rome, in 2005, during which she washed a Fiat 126p, the popular Maluch (midget), produced in Poland on an Italian license since the 1970s.
Despite its frequently critical undertone, Julita Wójcik's art has always been of cheerful character. During the performance Dokarmiaj niebieskie ptaki (Feed the Heavenly Birds, 2003-2005) she built and distributed bird feeders, the shape of which resembled that of the institutions she currently co-operated with. The video documenting the performance Pust' Wsiegda budiet solnce (2004,) shows the artist flying a sun-shaped kite. In 2004, in Kostrzyn she reconstructed the local castle, currently in ruins, with the use of a few hundred accordingly placed balloons. However, it was an ephemeral structure - the castle flew away during the reconstruction Odbudowa zamku (Rebuilding the Castle).
In 2005 Julita Wójcik began putting on performances of her interpretaton of the figure represented by the pictograph on the door of women's toilets, named Gilala. Dressed in a black sponge costume, the artist, as Gilala, skated on Sopot's ice rink (Jazda Figurowa / Figure Skating, 2005), and in Prague, during the biennial, she tried to cover the figure of Saint Nepomucene on the Charles Bridge (Figura pomnikowa / Monument Figure, 2005).
In 2007, Wójcik took up the poetic project If You See Something Say Something (2007) after she’s been invited to take part in an exhibition in Norway. She took the titular phrase from a propaganda action conducted in New York. It was supposed to increase the inhabitants’ attention to any suspicious persons, objects, and actions, at the same time increasing the anti-terrorist hysteria that broke out after 9/11 attacks. Wójcik took up the role of a propaganda medium and repeated the directions through a megaphone: ‘Be suspicious of anything unattended’. However, she was doing this on her very own, surrounded by the Norwegian fjords. As the artist explained:
So if this call, "if you see something say something" is impossible to respond to, it’s because the sights are so beautiful that you’re speechless and that’s it.
The importance of art, the position of the artist
Julita Wójcik, still from Unist landscape video, 2007, photo: Gessel Foundation History of art is the context of many of Wójcik’s actions. She is particularly interested in the issues of secondary usage of artistic works, museification, and the relationship between art and reality. All of these have, of course, been taken up with a sense of humour that is typical of the artist. For the opening of the new edifice of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, called ms2, Wójcik organised Wyścig na 3600 ms2 (3600 ms2 race). After the last speech, a starting pistol was shot – it was a signal beginning a run through the 3600 square meters of the new exhibition space. The artist was running among the guests wearing a white sports outfit, slaloming through the exhibits.
In some of her realisations Wójcik made ironic and playful references to abstract art by juxtaposing it with everyday life. In Centrum Rzeźby Polskiej (Polish Sculpture Centre) in Orońsk Wójcik read the works of Władysław Strzemiński, the creator of unism movement, surrounded by cows pasturing on the nearby field. Their spots resembled the stains from the painter’s unist paintings or, to put it differently, ‘afterimages’ (Pejzaż unistyczny / Unist landscape, 2007). As the artist further elaborated on the matter:
I’m trying to show that everybody can take part in creating contemporary art, everyone can participate. This is why I work like an amateur. I thought I would be able to realise an action where the cows would be creating in the presence of viewers – and eat unist compositions in the grass. But all in all they themselves became the unist composition.
As part of the Przebudzenie (Awakening) project in Świeć, Wójcik organised a hurdles race. She covered the hurdles with a striped, black and white canvas, resembling the pattern frequently used by the French artist Daniel Buren (Dyscyplina abstrakcyjna / Abstract discipline, 2009). The hurdles have been replaced with abstractionist paintings. As Wójcik explained:
As a result we get a reversion of Buren’s artistic praxis, which transformed itself into theoretical activity.
The curator of the action, Karina Dzieweczyńska, wrote:
The abstract discipline is the attempt to make the fact that art emerges from every seemingly normal activity visible. Isn’t 100-metre hurdles race an abstract action?
In 2009 in Wigry, where Dom Pracy Twórczej (Home for Creative Work) has operated until recently in a former monastery, Wójcik organised Kąpielisko (Bathing site), once again applying the logic drawn from abstract art to everyday life. The opening of Kąpielisko DPT Wigry (DPT Wigry Bathing Site) took place on August 30th, the ribbon was cut by the director of Dom Pracy Twórczej, Agnieszka Tarasiuk, and the children and teenagers Wójcik cooperated with performed a number of abstractionist bathing compositions.
Tęcza (The Rainbow)
Julita Wójcik and the Rainbow, photo: Kuba Dąbrowski / Agencja Gazeta It was also in Wigry, in the following year, that Tęcza (The Rainbow, 2010) was created. The arch, covered with faux flowers, was brining together the wall of the monastery and the slope the edifice is located at. The artist used a universal symbol – of God’s presence, covenant, the bridge of love, peace, mercy, hope, but also emancipation of sexual minorities. In a series of artistic projects realised in the public space of Brussels and called Fossils and Gardens, which took place as part of the celebrations of the first year of the Polish EU Presidency, Wójcik created a similar rainbow in a square in front of the European Parliament. From 2012 to 2015, from the initiative of Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Tęcza was located in the middle of the busy Plac Zbawiciela (Saviour Square). It was put on fire several times by identified and unidentified perpetrators, becoming one of the symbols of Warsaw and a part of national discourse.
As Wójcik said in an interview for Culture.pl:
It made it visible in public light that there is a part in Polish society which is open for discussion, for otherness, and another part which is conservative, traditionalist, and which has a problem with accepting the presence of people who follow different values. The meaning of the Rainbow in Warsaw made it manifest that we can no longer pretend that we do not have a socially pertinent problem with otherness, with tolerating people that think differently than we do, that follow principles which are not the same as our own.
Another work dealing with the condition of Polish society, which also referred to the situation of artists and their freedom, was the installation piece Bunkier (Bunker, 2014). Wójcik presented it in a park in front of the Abbot’s Palace in the Oliwa district of Gdańsk, where the Department of Modern Art of National Museum is located. She designed a small fortification – a balloon on which pictures of real bunkers from Gdynia were printed. As the artist further explained:
One can hide in the Bunker to feel safe, but you can also use it to attack, as it has windows for shooting. It’s like the personal space of freedom of every human.
The object is inflatable, because it speaks of dangers and conflicts that contemporary creators and viewers face. These are frequently blown out of proportion in our heads.
Artist keep on getting attacked. Politicians, because it is mostly them who pose accusations, claim that artist offend religious feelings. … Scandal is never the intention of an artist.
The theme of oppression, this time economical, was also taken up in the project created for the Kraj Przeszły / Kraj Przyszły exhibition (Country of the Past / Country of the Future) in Ateliê Espai in Belo Horizonte, organised as part of the programme promoting Polish culture in Brazil in 2016. Together with Jacek Niegoda they realised project inspired by the 90-year-long history of the Lalka sweets factory, established by a Polish immigrant. Wróżby ekonomiczne (Economic fortune-telling) by Wójcik is a new product for Lalka’s assortment – chocolate hearts with economic auguries written for the Brazilians by the artist. As Wójcik further explained:
Just like most people on this Earth, they are not free from economic traps set up by banks and other financial organisations. As a result they struggle with, for instance, paying installments.
Niedzielne Popołudnie (A Sunday Afternoon, 2018) is an individual exhibition-essay by Julita Wójcik, which opened at the State Art Gallery in Sopot. The exhibition consisted of a collection of works serving as visual sketches created between 2004 and 2017. Wójcik consistently juxtaposes basic daily activities to build tension, define her personal visual language and her socio-economic place. It is this simplicity that sometimes gives her works and performances a revolutionary character.
The title of the exhibition refers to Georges Seurat's 19th century idyllic painting A Sunday Afternoon On The Island of Grande Jatte (1884–1886). However, the idyllic atmosphere of Wójcik's exhibtions was an illusion; in reality, the narrative was rather dystopian. This was particularly evident in a diptych video entitled Niedzielne Popołudnie w Belo Horizonte (Sunday Afternoon In Belo Horizonte) executed in the form of Facebook cinema vérité (a genre of direct cinema). The projection consisted ofvery short pieces of footage presenting idyllicscenes from the Brazilian metropolis. They captured the deep division of Brazilian society, which is a result of its colonial past.
The exhibition wasn't a story about an exotic journey. It consisted of various artefacts, knitted portraits, filmed performances and objects. It was a documentation of activities in the public space, which provoked viewers to ask themselves questions about the surrounding reality. How is the Central European social structure different from Brazil’s postcolonial one? After 1989, did we not go too far in negating the realities of Poland under communism– did we not also reject the positive social changes that, thanks to post-emancipation and modernisation activities, entered our identity? Why do we allow ourselves be stripped of faith in the myth of modernity? Have we neglected the struggle to build an egalitarian society, which is embodied in modernist architecture and urban planning, or in labour law legislation? Have we adopted an extremely consumerist neoliberal economic model in its place, combined with a conservative turn that has been dynamically increasing recently? Are we not aiming at reproducing feudal structures in social relations, which create divisions and stratification similar to those existing in postcolonial countries?
A Sunday Afternoon posed a warning question: 'Will we be able to start again after today's retrograde movement?'
JulitaWójcik's individual exhibition Nieruchomości (Real Estate, trans. HSz) opened in 2019 at the Jan Tarasin Gallery in Kalisz.It featured works such as: Falowiec (Wavy Building,2005–2006), Blok Mściwoja Gdynia 4/6 (Housing Unit Mściwoja Gdynia 4/6, 2004) and twovideos: Wedudystka (Vedudist, 2004) and Modernistka (Modernist, 2009). The artist interpreted Polish apartment blocks from the 1970s in various ways. She decided to present the buildings’ human aspects with an emphasis on the unique quality that each tenant introduced to the building. After more than a decade since the creation of these pieces, they haveacquired a new, different meaning. Recently, the artist has been anxiously observing the destabilisation of the market as well as the socio-economic situation of artists. After the 2008 crisis – whose main cause was growing debt, especially mortgages –the concept of housing had to be re-evaluated.
Currently, apartments in blocks of flats make up 10% of the secondary real estate market. They are popular not only because of their low price, but also because of their functionalism, which is being appreciated anew lately. Under communist rule, these were allotments, but today they're entering the market as property, thus gaining new, previously foreign, value.
