ONE ORGANISM (2019)
Solo exhibition
BWA Olsztyn
Curator: Joanna Tekla Woźniak
One Organism was a solo, interactive exhibition built around a multisensory experience, in which viewers could take part in the “life” of sculptural objects: touching them, stroking them, wearing them, embracing them. This closeness, however, rested on mutual respect, towards the objects as much as towards fellow participants, and attentiveness was central to the whole experience. Soft, participatory structures blurred the boundaries between body, object and habitat, giving equal weight to everyone involved in the relationship: the object, the viewer and the present moment itself, the moment in which the two worlds became one. The project was an early study of interdependence, adaptation and ecological relationality in my practice.
Crossing the threshold of a gallery, we almost always enter a reality out of the ordinary. On the one hand, we can rely on our senses; on the other, what we experience in an exhibition may depart markedly from the norms we know, introducing dissonance. Such freedom of experience depends on the creation of a suitable space, an artificially constructed, invented one, in which we experiment and in which we can immerse ourselves, and not only in the literal sense.
The objects presented in One Organism were made by Patrycja Pi Pa Piwosz over more than a year for an art-research project of the same title. The artefacts gathered in the room were conceived as mobile and were meant to permeate, intermingle and interlock with one another. The exhibition brought together more than a dozen sculptures and haptic objects, made in a range of techniques and entering into dialogue for the first time, along with an accompanying soundtrack.
Almost all of the works in the exhibition could be touched. We were encouraged to shape our own experience of the show. By putting on some of the objects on display, we found ourselves right beside the works, almost merging with them. For a moment, we shifted from observers to participants, from consumers to co-creators.
The objects that made up the exhibition, together with the lighting and sound, were independent entities that jointly formed a unique “ecosystem” in which the smallest element affected how the whole functioned. Our intervention was needed, however, to bring this invented, constructed world to life and to give it meaning through imagination. The whole could evoke an unusual fitting room, a prop room or a storeroom of peculiar items of clothing, strange jewellery or enigmatic objects. According to the artist’s intention, we were to try them on, test them on ourselves, or test ourselves in them. What is it all for? To allow us to transform our nature? That seems hardly possible. What we were given was a space filled with peculiar objects, most of which we could try on and slip onto our arms, legs or heads. We were given a space for experience and self-reflection, in which we could temporarily change our appearance and the way we feel.
In One Organism, everything is connected, acts upon everything else and changes in response to it, because, however briefly we may be taken in by the illusion that we are autonomous individuals, we always remain part of a larger whole. This is a reference to the human body, but also, more broadly, to the home, society and the world.
/Joanna Tekla Woźniak /
Photos: Kuba Zdanowicz / Arek Stankiewicz