13.05 – 10.08.2022
Polish Institute Düsseldorf
Citadellstraße 7 D-40213 Düsseldorf, Germany
Artists: Maga Ćwieluch, Magda Hueckel, Marta Zgierska
Curator: Katarzyna Sagatowska
The body, the tangible evidence of human existence in the world and the universe. It undergoes many transformations in its life cycle. Growth, maturity, aging. At death, it passes from the category of subject to the category of object. In addition to biological influences, the body is subjected to those less visible to the naked eye – social, cultural. Pressure, expectations, canons of beauty, behavior patterns. All this creates connections, adhesions. Some give strength, others create scars, which are the cause of numerous ailments and complications leading even to life
The exhibition “Zrosty” presents works by three Polish artists – Maga Ćwieluch, Magda Hueckel and Marta Zgierska – who in different ways explore the connections between our body and the external and internal world. Maga Ćwieluch has taken a closer look at the male body, the language of gestures and everyday rituals, inquiring how deeply styling and mannerism can penetrate skin and deep body tissues. Magda Hueckel shows the human body in the context of widely understood nature, depriving it of its anthropocentric context. She understands it as a part of a larger whole that nourishes but also hosts, is born, grows into, absorbs, feeds and is a part of a chain. Hueckel weaves autobiographical threads into her artistic reflections, searching for the healing potential of nature. Marta Zgierska, on the other hand, consistently uses her own body to express reflections on identity, canons of beauty and social pressure related to them. Once she transforms her image into a pure form, devoid of mimetic content and gender. At other times she subjects her body to various substances in order to trace the micro changes in her image or to sacrifice herself to Beauty, which she considers a contemporary deity. She refers to the cult of an ideal body spreading in the virtual world.
What unites the three artists is the physical contact with the analyzed matter. Whether through gestures like handmade collages, cutting and reassembling, or by subjecting their own bodies to complicated, sometimes painful, experiments. They also share a feminine perspective from which they look at the adhesions experienced by the human body.
Exhibition documentation