Interview with Aneta Szylak
by Allen Frame
conducted via email"Architectures of Gender", at the SculptureCenter, Long Island City, Queens, New York, April 11 - June 8, 2003, will be the first major exhibition of contemporary Polish women artists in New York. Guest curated by Aneta Szylak, former Director of Laznia Center for Contemporary Art in Gdansk, Poland, the exhibition will also be the first significant group show of contemporary Polish art in New York since 1976. Presented in cooperation with the Polish Cultural Institute, the exhibition includes 16 multi-generational artists, whose primary means of expression is the medium of installation. The artists include: Izabella Gustowska , Ela Jablonska, Katarzyna Józefowicz , Agnieszka Kalinowska, Katarzyna Kozyra, Zofia Kulik, Natalia LL, Dorota Nieznalska, Hanna Nowicka-Grochal, Paulina Olowska, Anna Plotnicka, Jadwiga Sawicka, Dominika Skutnik, Monika Sosnowska, Julita Wójcik, and Karolina Wysocka.
Allen Frame: First, tell me how you came to be the curator of this show of Polish women artists at the SculptureCenter?
Aneta Szylak: I have been thinking about curating a show here in New York for the last couple of years, while commuting between my home city Gdansk and New York City. I realized at some point, through discussions with my friends and colleagues in New York, that presenting the completely unknown Polish women's art scene here might be fresh, energizing and would focus attention here. I approached Mary Ceruti, the Sculpture Center's Executive Director, with my proposal and luckily it clicked. I am very excited about working with them. We are happy to have the Polish Cultural Institute and the National Museum in Warsaw as partners for the project.
Elizabeth Joblonska
“House Games”, 2002
billboard edition
AF: Are you concentrating on women artists because they have been playing a significant role in recent Polish art, or because they have been underexposed and deserve a boost? Or both?
AS: Nowadays Polish women artists seem to be really visible on the art scene, working with such groundbreaking new attitudes, that it would be hard not to notice them. Since the early seventies they were very active and after a less active period of the eighties, women artists are getting more and more visible, more and more active. There were some major group shows of Polish women artists in the country that supported this phenomenon. So we can not say that recently they are underexposed in their home country (but they were underexposed a dozen or more years ago). Today they have an audience, energize discussions and they are present in the mass media to an extent never seen before. There have also been many controversies surrounding women artists who have played a significant role in shaping the contemporary art discourse. But definitely they are not exposed enough in the United States as individuals or as a group phenomenon. Many of them have never exhibited in New York and will come here for the first time. I am very proud and happy to have this opportunity to support them. Regardless of that, I would prefer not to politicize the decision of showing women. The decision is more about the concept of the show and the excellence of their art rather than the politics of exposure. But through the public programs accompanying the exhibition, at the SculptureCenter, and at the New School, we will be discussing also the political and social circumstances of women, women artists and their work in Poland today.
Agnieska Kalinowska
“Just a little bit more”, 2002
Installation
AF: You've spent a lot of time in New York in the last few years. My impression is that art being made in Poland is much more conceptual and political than work by New York artists. Is that true — or how would you characterize the differences?
AS: They are many differences. Polish society is almost homogeneous, so there is no such multicultural variety of attitudes as in New York, which struck me when I came to NYC for the first time. It definitely affects the character of contemporary art. Also, the Polish art scene is much more decentralized than the American one. International curators often make a mistake going only to Warsaw. But there are at least 5 to 6 important and absolutely different art scenes, shaped by different educational and artistic institutions. There are many centers the foreign researcher ought to go to.
It is probably quite well known that Polish identity is shaped by quite a turbulent political history. This strong interest in politics is something the artists share with society. There are also many important phenomena of public life the artists want to discuss, which is natural in a young democracy, which is reshaping the identity of the nation. We had and we still do have many reasons to have artists involved in this process. The last three decades were especially complex, and this, of course, influences both artists' attitudes and curatorial stances. Artists in Poland are much less interested in compromising about their art. The identity of art was shaped also by the extended network of the underground independent artists' art places, now becoming their history. Those places were the real supporters of political and conceptual art. Their role was different than the role of the artist-run places in the US, because there was no public support, no money at all. But there was energy and the will to work together.
The very fact, that for a long time the development of the Polish art scene was happening practically without an art market also influenced the situation. It affected the economic situation of the artists but it also had advantages, because for a long time the market did not manipulate values with the means of promotion. This makes the mainstream of art in the country more focused on concept and ideas, less on the pleasure of the potential collector. Now the situation is changing. The youngest generations of curators work as gallerists, journalists, and critics, which is mixing the roles and blurring the boundaries between those professions. I am really curious, what this situation will change in the international reception of Polish art. How much we will lose, and what we are going to get.
Katarzyna Jozefowicz
“Habitat”, 2002
AF: Other than grouping women together in this show, what are other connections between their work?
AS: The title of the exhibit is "Architectures of Gender" and the idea for it came from my experience of the SculptureCenter's new facility, which I saw for the first time in the fall of 2001. I started to discuss the project of this exhibition by Polish women artists with Mary Ceruti before I saw the new space, but after I entered the building, I realized, that this building was so sexy, of such mystery, and so challenging as a space, that I couldn't and I did not want to ignore it. I then conceived the exhibition as a response to the SC exhibition venues and its location, trying to conceptualize the space using the category of gender. We are exhibiting there three-dimensional works, most of them recollecting certain places of women's lives in their public or private aspects (The diversity, that is, of course, blurred now). So the allusive space the artists create or redefine may remind us of the artist's studio, bedroom, kitchen, or garden. But there will be many works that recollect spaces connected with masculine presence and experience: public bathhouses for men, sport clubs, etc... The artists explore those spaces, too, and build up the equivalents of their ideology in the show. The notion of architecture here has a double message: we talk about actual building, but also about cultural constructions of gender.
Kalolina Wysocka
“Cautiously”, 2002
(glass)
AF: Pedagogy plays a bigger role perhaps in Polish art than American art in the sense that particular teachers in leading Polish art schools have more of a guru status than their American counterparts. In the U.S., although particular teachers have an impact, it's usually the reputation of the institution itself that influences the status of its students. Do you agree with this, and if so, what do you think are the strengths or weaknesses of a system that so emphasizes the role of art teacher as Master, someone whose aesthetics and approach are to be followed and imitated?
AS: Well, if you have no really good schools, you have to have gurus. The educational system in the visual arts has not received a significant lift so there are very few teachers who can play such a role. The education is more studio- based, focused on traditional mediums. There is a big fear of new art, new technologies. Also, because the academies are a separate structure, that is, not a part of the universities, intellectual education is really underdeveloped. There are some teachers, of great intellectual capability, well- known artists and charismatic personalities, who are able to play such a role: Grzegorz Kowalski and Leon Tarasewicz in Warsaw, Grzegorz Klaman and Witoslaw Czerwonka in Gdansk. There are interesting personalized differences in the teacher's methods: whereas Kowalski seems to be more interested in deep psychological introspection, Klaman is more oriented to the social context of the artist. It is interesting to observe how those differences shape the specificity of the local art milieus.
Julita Wojcik
“My Garden”, 2000
AF: Why does Poland claim such a seat of vital contemporary art, especially compared to the former Soviet Republics, Russia, and the rest of Eastern Europe? What happened to contemporary art in Poland after 1989? Has it thrived in response to the political changes in the region, or has its vitality diminished without its special status as a more open scene within the Eastern Bloc? Or have its changes or growth been in response to some other issues?
Dominika Skutnik
“Untitled”, 2001
light installation
AS: I think that, generally, Central and Eastern Europe, formerly colonized by the Soviets and now shaping its democratic identity, is the complete terra incognita for an international audience. The art scenes are very interesting and very different; some of them are more, some of them less accessible due to many reasons. But I believe that it is time to reach beyond the CEE exotics. It is of course, very hard to look at it without historical and political context, but we should also make an effort to watch closer the cultural differences between those countries to contextualize the specificity of the art here. To accept the localism and to find a way of absorbing it into the international art discourse. Going back to Poland: it is true that the periods of social, political and economic transition and transformation have had an impact on art in Poland. It is probably a very natural reaction of the artists' witnessing such an enormous shift. But it has not been an easy decision, considering the allergy toward political engagement after social realism. The artists are interested in discussing cultural icons, national representation, Polish Catholicism, national symbols, politicization of the body, the situation of women and minorities, and many other ideas. The youngest generation of artists is also influenced by the "media-lization" of reality. But they are also involved in building up this reality, by working in television, magazines, and advertisement agencies to support themselves. It seems to affect the ideas and forms of their art.
© Allen Frame 2003
All images © and courtesy of the artists, 2003
Aneta Szylak has worked as a curator and art critic based in Gdansk, Poland since 1985. Ms. Szylak is a Vice-President of the Wyspa Progress Foundation, a non-profit art organization established in 1994. In 1998 Ms. Szylak founded the Center for Contemporary Art Laznia (Bathhouse) and was its director until the spring 2001. Laznia is the only public art institution that emerged during the sociopolitical transformation and is now one of the major art spaces in Poland.
Aneta Szylak curated several shows i.e. "Where Are You From?" VII Rauma Biennale Balticum (Finland), [1998], "Public Relations. Art From Gdansk" [1999], "All You Need Is Love", "Roads To Freedom" [2000]. She attempts to incorporate social and political context into her curatorial practice.
She has written over a hundred texts about contemporary art, published in catalogues, books and art magazines in Poland and abroad. She is a board member of the Mare Articum Magazine in Poland and Polish Contributing Editor of the Central European Art Magazine Praesens in Budapest. She writes for the Art Journal and Raster (www.raster.art.pl). She edited a book entitled "The Site of Idea. The Idea of Site" [1995] covering the first 10 years of the Gdansk alternative art scene history. Her newest exhibition project titled "Architectures of Gender. Contemporary Women's Art in Poland" opens in the spring 2003 at the Sculpture Center, Long Island City, New York. Forthcoming is "You Won't Feel A Thing" at the Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin in 2005.
Allen Frame is a photographer, writer, and curator living in New York. He teaches photography at SVA, ICP, Pratt Institute, and the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City. His book DETOUR, a compilation of images from the last ten years, was published last year by Kehrer Verlag in Germany.