A Little bit mad, last minute idea, I was invited to participate in An overnight exhibition based in Warsaw’s Creative space at The Old Lace factory, which was transformed for a night into a gallery where multiple Artists and designers Were showing their work. I am becoming increasingly interested in the indigenous Polish crafts and worried about their dissapearance due to the Artists intense labour combined with scarcity of income, which is due to lack of appreciation and government support. I am thinking how, as a Contemporary artist feeling inspired by craft art, pagan rituals and the role of feminism role in the development of female crafts art, how I An weave a connection between them and the art lovers and influence longevity of the dying Arts. I want to tackle this through the lens of ethnography, feminist literature, iterviewing the artists, cultural theory and making more art incorporating historic Polish crafts.
For the exhibition I have created MARZANNA / THE PUPPET – a figure embodies the enduring, powerful connection between women and nature – a vessel of intuition, cyclical knowledge, and collective memory carried across generations. Constructed from raw willow, her body is both fragile and resilient, rooted in the land and shaped by hand, holding within it a knowledge system that has long been dismissed, feared, and suppressed. I Used willow from a local Polish farm, created a chaotic ball belly base, another round shape for the top of the torso and the smallest one for the head. I then “poked” the straight sticks through the holes in the ball shapes to create two standing legs and a “spine” which was then Used to attach the top of the chest and the head
In the meantime I stitched and draped one of my drawings of Dancers on vellum on my pregnant mannekin torso, which I brought with me from London and “dressed” the willow Puppet in the vellum skin, cobering her shoulders and back with a natural wool jumper my grandmother hand Knitted for one of my collections 18 years ago.
I then Used hand crocheted lace from the Koniakow area, shaped using sugar Water into a stiff drapy veil, to cover her face, to symbolise taking her voice away, as once she becomes a mother, the simple, uneducated small Town Woman becomes a Puppet of the Society’s expectations of her: the Children are most important, her own Identity dissapears, the Society expects her to become invisible as a person and visible only as a mother, wife, provider, Cook and cleaner
Hand crocheted lace and her hand-knitted jumper carries another layer of meaning — the quiet, persistent labour of women. Passed from generation to generation, these skills are often reduced to “women’s work,” yet here they stand as acts of resistance.
In her belly the light pulses pink, Purple and red symbolising the beating heart of the baby growing inside as well as the love for the person growing inside her.
In her head, a small speaker plays the music from Warsaw Village Band, folk songs that have existed for generations, everyday stories of simple, hard working Women, in sad but powerful voices resisting invisibility and dissapearance.
Obstacles during prep: Constant worry that I am going crazy and doing somthing nobody will relate to and that the piece will be too weird and scary, too “unfinished looking” to be accepted to the exhibition.
Results: I took the piece in anyway and the Curator seemed very excited and open, she wanted me to place the piece at the very entrance to the exhibition and supported every crazy thing I did , the speakers, my high platform shoes(which in included to give presence to a Version of myself from 20 years ago, pre-children, which is still in there somewhere wanting to get out, come back, reclaim her presence). She loved the Shoes and together with two other people wants to order a pair. I’m wondering if I should go back to that Version of me…scared to contact the crafts Artists from the mountains who will probably say no to making the Shoes or give me An unbearable Price.
The fabulous woman in the photo is Jaga Hupało, the godmother of the whole project entitled Rock. Paper. Scissors and she is the one who invited me and accepted my mad puppet idea and encouraged me saying that all I really need is to find a tribe of like minded people, who are on the same wavelength. She then mentioned such tribe existed ages ago, before the name of our country Poland even existed, and they called themselves POLANIE
- Polska: The native Polish name for the country, which evolved directly from the territory of the Polans.
- Poland: The English exonym, derived from the same tribal root
Another surprise of the evening: sudden reapearrance of my high heeled mountain shoes created in collaboration with crafts artists from Tatra mountains 20 years ago. I thought they went well with the Marzanna concept and suddenly a few women became very interested in ordering them. I am very comfused: should I be going back to doing fashion?!?!
The Highlight of the Evening: someone deciding the mannekin I use to shape my lamps was also an art piece and decided to place it on a plynth in the corner of the gallery:)))
