In the Heart of the Country is both the museum's major endeavour to date, as well as the largest international survey of contemporary art to be held in Warsaw. Presenting more than 150 works from the MoMA Warsaw collection, compiled since the museum's inception in 2005, the show spans Wilhelm Sasnal's Astronaut and Goshka Macuga's giant Letter, reprising Tadeusz Kantor's happening involving a letter on its way to the Foksal Gallery, and representing the critics' and public's response to the contemporary art scene in Poland. Along with works by well-known Polish artists of recent decades - Mirosław Bałka, Rafał Bujnowski, Oskar Dawicki, Zbigniew Libera and Józef Robakowski - In the Heart of the Country presents major artists from around the world, including Yael Bartana and Sanja Iveković. Many of these works travel the museum and art circuit in Poland and abroad, such as Bałka's Black Pope and Black Sheep, to be presented in the main exhibition of this year's Venice Biennale.
MoMA Warsaw director Joanna Mytkowska has cited those who have noted the politically and socially charged character of the collection, representing a spectrum of international issues significant for our age. "This is an entirely different way of narrating", Mytkowska explains. "There is less art history and much more society, politics, urban aesthetics and current issues".
Wojciech Bąkowski, "Miejsce w którym dzieje się coś ważnego" / "A Place Where Something Important Happens", 2013
The title of the exhibition is taken from a short story by J.M. Coetzee, in which the "heart of the nation" is a hole, a phantasm of physical satisfaction and maturity that is impossible to achieve - of identity, body, society. In this context, the idea refers in major part to the planned location for the museum itself - broken off last year just as construction was to begin - as well as to the nostalgia for modernity, which often holds artists and institutions hostage. The works come together as a web of thematic axes, referring to such issues as the globalisation of art history, ties between the city and contemporary art, emancipatory narratives in art, problematics of historical memory, language and ethics of modernity, social engagement and - a rare topic for the field - manifestations of spirituality.
Mirosław Bałka, "Chłopiec i orzeł" / "Boy and Eagle", 1988, Photo: Bartosz Stawiarski / MSN
The exhibition can be seen as a foreshadowing, even a practice run, for the museum's collections future permanent display. It is a survey of the trials and accomplishments of the Polish art scene over many years, which sought to create an art collection with global reach while defining and showcasing the most important currents in Polish art for each era. The collection delves into the associations between art and the city, politics and history as it pursues a vision of the future and new visions of the past. At the same time, the collection traces the roots of modernity and the way it was addressed by some of the most intriguing personages of the 20th century, such as Alina Szapocznikow and Andrzej Wróblewski, and how their efforts were observed by contemporary critics and art theorists.
In the Heart of the Country is also an attempt to present Poland's political-economic transformation in a new light, while taking into consideration its cultural, ethical and social repercussions. In addition, it describes the artistic phenomena that went along with this transformation across the latter half of the 20th century. As art becomes a historical record for a given era, the museum's collection is set up around a series of questions about contemporaneity and today's art realm. How do works of art speak of Poland to the outside world, beyond the autonomous sphere of the museum? What are the expectations put upon the artist with regard to society? What is the relation between a work of art and the spectator? And at last: how long does the concept of what is contemporary last and at what point does it pass into history?
The MoMA Warsaw collection includes works purchased within the Ministry of Culture and National Heritages programme for building up such an international collection of contemporary art, as well as works acquired as gifts and donations from corporations, private persons and artists. Certain works were donated by museum patrons or commissioned especially for the museum, for certain projects and events from such artists as Zbigniew Libera, Sharon Hayes and Paweł Althamer. The collection includes significant archives, such as over 150,000 negatives by Eustachy Kossakowski and the documentation of Grzegorz Kowalski's activities, along with hundreds of art films and shorts that have already been made available via the museum's online film archive.
The exhibition is accompanied by an interdisciplinary programme of performances, lectures, screenings and workshops. New contexts and new ways of reading works in the collection will be one of the major themes of discussions with experts from various fields of art, with the participation of the public.
In the Heart of the Country takes place at the MoMA (MSN) Warsaw between the 14th of May - 6th of January 2014, under the honourary patronage of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. For more information, see: artmuseum.pl
Author: Agnieszka Sural, May 2013. Translated by Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie
14.05.2013