Idyll, August 3, 2004
Video, 3:55 min, 2004
A film „Idyll” is produced in a post-industrial Russia – in a meadow, a young girl wearing a headscarf and a Komsomol-style dress lies on the grass with a closed, dormant Russian industrial plant in the background. An idyllic countryside atmosphere similar to that portratyed in Indian Summer by Józef Chelmonski contrasts sharply with the industrial landscape. On the one hand, it is a a cheerful propaganda image of a woman from a bygone era; on the other hand, it is the image of a degradaded enviroment somewhere at the outskirts of the industrialized world.
This film has been produced within the framework of the exhibition Under the White & Red Flag. New Art from Poland in Niznhy Tagil, the Middle Urals in Russia, curated by Magda Kardasz. The film belongs to the collection of the Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw / Poland. (J.W.)
Downshifting? I think in a way we live now at the similar times like middle ages or in some way also like near the Revolution times in XIX century France. And this revolution already began: in Spain, Greece and those countries where the financial economy collapsed. People change their life into more personal one, more “useful” one, they eat less, build less, make less garbage. They do those everyday things but in human proportions. In my artistic practice I have aways been trying to expose simple daily activities like flying a kite, gardening, peeling potatoes... to do that what for today’s world is to “slow-living”...
Artist's Bio:
Julita Wójcik introduces to her art a very personal, and thus very feminine, idiom. She reads from a private perspective the social conventions and codes, which she then ’familiarises’ and employs in her projects. Those are often very prosaic activities, typical for a ‘provincial girl,’ as the artist likes to call herself. Crocheting, sweeping up, cultivating a small vegetable garden, or setting up water holes in public places, building bird tables or flying kites are hardly activities one would think of as art, being more of everyday-life experiences, somewhat characteristic for a bygone era that is slowly falling into oblivion. The simple activities acquire a deeper meaning only when placed in an artistic context which, on the one hand, elevates them, and, on the other, strips art of its elitist quality. Demonstrating how art can negotiate with reality on an equal footing. (Ewa Gorządek)