Exhibition: 28th March 2014 – 17th May 2014
4th April 2014 Meeting with Inga Iwasiów ‘Tożsamość/Seksualność’.
Curator: Iwona Bigos
Coordination: Maria Sasin
Venue: Gdańsk City Gallery 1, ul. Piwna 27/29
Perygeum is a term derived from astronomy delineating a point where an object – most often the Moon – is at its closest proximity to the Earth, which makes it look enormous and most impressive. Therefore Perygeum for me is the moment of admiration and proximity to beauty. At this point, I am closest to mystery, but still far enough for my own imagination to eclipse the real sight. It is more of a desire than fulfilment.
One of the elements of the Project is a dress. Beautiful. Red. This motif has reappeared several times in my previous realizations. The first was a wedding dress, the so called “meringue”. It was ten times larger than my original size which made me feel like a little girl trying on a dress of the adult bride. Giant and uncompromised in its form the dress was displayed together with several photos (Ponad miarę, ale w normie /Oversized but compliant with the norm, 2001).
The next wedding dress appeared in the series of photographs Tak czyli Nie / Yes meaning No and Najpiękniejszy dzień w życiu /The Best Day of My Life. In this series I employed an original dress of my close friend. Also, a number of original wedding photos of various couples were used – these were either taken by professionals or by wedding guests. This time the dress fitted me perfectly, just like my whole effigy fitted into the documents of somebody else’s weddings. Instead of the outfits I “try on” the grooms in fact. And the choice is not easy since all of them fit equally well. Other dresses appeared in Kwiat Paproci /Fern blossom. They were the First Holy Communion dresses, really tawdry and bourgeois in style. They all looked cheap and resembled shrunken wedding dresses. The little outfits were spinning in an odd, monotonous dance and their flock was surrounded by pictures of mongrel bitch dogs with looks far from classic beauty. The bitches were compatible with the dresses – although ugly but loved and sentimental with their non-obvious beauty. Their task was to guard the present bourgeois order.
The idea for the next dress had been maturing for long time. While the former ones represented a disagreement with the status quo, this particular one was supposed to embody a dream. I was watching the funeral ceremony of John Paul II and the blaze of multiple colours attracted my attention there: red and crimson threaded with gold – all visible in the robe shattered by the wind. The sight of the splendour and power of the highest church dignitaries was hypnotizing. So when I realised that my 13-year-old neighbour was an altar girl, I immediately pictured a dress that she could be wearing if the involvement of the girls in the church came with the possibility of promotion, as in case with men. “What dress could Ania be wearing if she became a cardinal?” If the robes worn by male dignitaries of the church resemble royalty, what would then their counterparts destined for women look like? Would they look like a queen’s gown?
The dress resulted from cooperation with the Kasia Hubinska’s fashion atelier. It is aimed at setting our imagination in motion; it becomes the focal point of the project. It is surrounded by other petit objects, which float around it together with a text written by Kinga Iwasiow. The text is a record of the whispers uttered during the fitting and refers to the texture and meaning of the priest’s cassock being transferred into a fabulous woman’s dress. The dream of beauty and initiation slowly burning in a tight stomach, is changed into jewels that are excreted only when they are neither seen, heard or judged by anyone. It is no longer a fantasy about God but a fantasy about splendour and power. And since it is impossible to fulfil, it starts building – within the object – fabulous sharp bezoars that cause mutilations by which one approximates perygeum.
Agata Zbylut
Agata Zbylut
Agata Zbylut studied at the Instytut Kultury i Sztuki Plasycznej WSP/the Institute of Culture and Visuala Arts in Zielona Góra (now the University of Zielona Góra) between 1993 and 1999. In 2008 she defended her doctoral thesis in Applied Art at the Faculty of Multimedia Communication of the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan and in 2012 she got a position as Assistant Professor at the Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Filmowa i Teatralna (The Film School) in Łódź.
Since 1995, Agata Zbylut has been working as an artist and has displayed her works at numerous solo and group exhibitions in Poland, Germany, Belarus, Russia, France and the USA.
Between 2000 and 2005 she worked as a curator at the Amfilada Gallery. In 2004 she coordinated the National Programme of Culture „Znaki czasu” in the westpomeranian voivodeship. In 2005 she was awarded the bronze medal Zasłużony Kulturze Gloria Artis. Since 2004, Agata Zbylut has been the president of the Association Zachęta Sztuki Współczesnej in Szczecin. She is the originator and a curator of the Festiwal Sztuki Młodych Przeciag (the Youth Art Festival Przeciag) in 2007, 2009 and 2011. Since 2008, she has been working at the Department of Landscape Design at the West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin and since 2010 she heads the Studio of Interactive Activity at the Szczecin Academy of Art.
Inga Iwasiów
An associate professor, a literary critic, a prose writer, a historian, a literary theoretician and a poet. She was the editor of the Szczecin Bi-monthly Cultural Journal „Pogranicza” (Borderlands) since 1999 until 2012, when the magazine closed. She has been holding her professorial post at the University of Szczecin since 2000 where she heads the Faculty of XX Century Literature at the Institute of Polish Philology and Cultural Studies. She received the title of Full Professor in 2007. She sits on the jury of the “Nike”Literary Award (2009 – 2013) and the “Gryfia” Literary Award for Woman Writers. She is also the President of the Polish Autobiographical Association.
Inga Iwasiow is the pioneerin author of the „feminist endeavour”: „Kresy w twórczości Włodzimierza Odojewskiego” (“Borderland in the Works of Wlodzimierz Odojewski”) (Szczecin 1994) and a thesis of Leopold Tyrmand’s prose „Opowieść i milczenie” (“Story and silence”) (Szczecin 2000).
Inga Iwasiów has published: „Gender dla średnio zaawansowanych. Wykłady szczecińskie” (Gender – intermediate level. Szczecin Lectures) (Warszawa 2004, 2nd edition, 2008), „Parafrazy i reinterpretacje. Wykłady z teorii i praktyki czytania” („Paraphrases and Reinterpretations. Lectures on the theory and praxis of Reading”) (Szczecin 2004), „Rewindykacje. Kobieta czytająca dzisiaj” (Vindications. Contemporary Woman Reader”) (Kraków 2002), the miscellany of poetry: „Miłość” („Love”)(Szczecin 2000) i „39/41” (Szczecin 2004), a story „Smaki i dotyki” (”Tastes and Touches”)(Warszawa 2006) and the novels: ” Bambino”(Warszawa 2008), „Ku słońcu”(„Towards the Sun”) (Warszawa 2010), „Na krótko”(“Briefly”) (Warszawa 2012) to name just some of her most prominent works.
Works published in 2013: „Blogotony” (Wielka Litera Publishing House), „Umarł mi. Notatnik żałoby” („He Has died.Funereal Diary”) (wyd. Czarne, Wołowiec), „Granice. Polityczność prozy i dyskursu kobiet po 1989 roku” (Borderlines. The politicisation of prose and women’s discourse after 1989) (Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Szczecińskiego).
Affiliation: Stowarzyszenie Pisarzy Polskich (The Polish Writers Association), Polski PAN Club, (Polish PAN Club), Towarzystwo Literackie im. Adama Mickiewicza (Adam Mickiewicz Literary Association), Polskie Towarzystwo Autobiograficzne (Polish Autobiographical Association), Komitet Nauk o Literaturze PAN (The PAN Literary Sciences Committee).
