opening: 23rd September, 19.00

Krystyna Piotrowska
Curator: Marta Smolińska

The exhibition Małgorzata’s Golden Hair in CoCA in Toruń is the first such extensive presentation of Krystyna Piotrowska’s works. It shows a specific dialogue between the artis’s latest and earlier pieces.

Since 2005 Krystyna Piotrowska, formerly working with graphic techniques, has been doing mainly installations and video works. The reason for this shift was “Próżna Street” project initiated by the artist along with Krystiana Robb-Narbut in desolate houses in Próżna St. in Warsaw, the only remains after the ghetto that used to be there. Within the project, once a year, in the dilapidated interiors in the city centre there are exhibitions held to remind of the Jewish past of the place. Krystyna Piotrowska not only presents her works there, but is also the curator.

This experience is closely linked to the artist’s biography as well as to her questions about individual identity crystallized somewhere on the tense borderland of Jewishness and Polishness. In her works, the artist poses questions about her own countenance, putting herself in the context of History with the horror of the Holocaust and the current realities. Her means of expression and multifaceted message of certain works go beyond an individual statement and become transmitters for universal meanings valid for all of us and our questions about our own condition in the face of History, time and liquid modernity. Piotrowska also deals with the passing of time, the change of facial features through the years, femininity and its various manifestations.

The main theme of Krystyna Piotrowska’s latest installation, as the title itself suggests, is hair. Braided in a log plait they lie on the gallery floor creating a concentric structure looking like a mandala. The distressing installation is accompanied by videos showing models having their hair braided in plaits, and a projection showing these women unbraiding their hair. Plaits, braiding and unbraiding become symbolic means of expression opening this piece to feminist reading, as well.

The title of the latest work by Piotrowska and of the whole show in CoCA refers to a poem by Paul Celan, Death Fugue, in which the fair-haired Małgorzata embodies life and the dark-haired Sulamite – death and Holocaust; the hair of the former sparkle with gold, the latter’s are like ashes. Both themes interweave inseparably not only in Celan’s poem, but also in Piotrowska’s works. The artist’s biography itself, with the phantom of History in the background, gives way to reading the meanings transmitted by the works in a universal way. Her works become transmitters of multi-layered, still up-to-date and incredibly moving matters. In the spaces of CoCA works from earlier periods enter into a dialogue with those new ones, telling a quiet story about a woman and man; and even though they look straight in the eyes of the present, the shadow of History lays anxiously over them.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with texts by Ewa Toniak, Anda Rottenberg and Bożena Kowalska, and by an educational brochure with a text by Marta Smolińska, the curator of this exhibition.

Krystyna Piotrowska in the years 1966-72 studied at the Deaprtment of Interior Design of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (its branch in Katowice), in the years 1972-75 at the Graphic Design Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, and in the years 1985-90 – in Grafik Skolan Forum Malmö. She has presented her works in Poland and Sweden, as well as in Paris and Hamburg. She has received many awards at the International Graphic Biennale, a.o. in Frechen, Lublana and Sapporo. Since 2005 she has been the curator of “Próżna Street” project (www.projektprozna.pl).