MONIKA PIORKOWSKA
WORKS
Monika Piorkowska
you are a part of, 2018, Neon writing auf Akrylglas montiert, doppelseitige stehende Spiegel, 68 x 98 x 5 cm und 50,5 x 188 cm, Unikat
Fotocredit Monika Piorkowska / Exhibition view "Literal" with Robert Barry, Julius Deutschbauer, Jana Sterbak, Peter Weibel, Lawrence Weiner, Galerie Steinek, Wien 2019
Monika Piorkowska
you are a part of, 2018, Neon writing auf Akrylglas montiert, doppelseitige stehende Spiegel, 68 x 98 x 5 cm und 50,5 x 188 cm, Unikat
Fotocredit Monika Piorkowska
Monika Piorkowska
humanismuss, 2019, Glass writing, 48 x 65 x 5 cm, Unikat
Fotocredit Monika Piorkowska
Monika Piorkowska
human rights, 2019, Glass writing, 14 x 130 x 5 cm, Unikat
Fotocredit Monika Piorkowska
Monika Piorkowska
artwork / hardwork, 2019, Neon writing auf Holz montiert, Akrylfarbe, 101 x 81 x 5 cm, Unikat
Fotocredit Monika Piorkowska
Monika Piorkowska, TO BE OR TO SHOP, Neon Writing, 85 x 160 cm, 2014
Monika Piorkowska, THE BOAT, double sided transparent object 70 x 200 x 6 cm,, uv print on acrylic glass
Monika Piorkowska, FROM ROSA G., double sided transparent object 147 x 100 x 6 cm,, uv-print on acrylic glass, 2012
Exhibition view ART & RECYCLING Kare Art Gallery in Istanbul, 2014
liquid democracy
Monika Piorkowska
Curated by Angela Stief
25. April - 31. Mai 2017
At Galerie Steinek Monika Piorkowska arranges numerous white soaps to an installation that is wavily extending into the room. „liquid democracy“ is embossed at every soap. While washing, the font dissolves bit by bit. As slow, respectively as quick, as the western values are currently fluidizing.
Achievements of the Age of Enlightenment like the freedom of speech and the freedom of the arts recently were trampled under foot. The cancellation of Monika Piorkowska’s exhibition „Time Gates“ at the Polish Institute in Vienna was an affront, that not only has to be understood as an assault on the artist and on contemporary art, furthermore it is attacking our society and its constitutional rights.
How tolerant should we be dealing with it? And how actively are we protecting our hard-won rights? None of the Austrian politicians of the governing parties made a public statement. This implicit solidarity with the aggressor and the silent washing hands in innocence results, if considering the aesthetic argumentation of the artwork, not only in democratic liquefaction, but even in liquidation.
Piorkowska, born in 1977 in Krakow, wants her work to contribute to an understanding of a complex reality and to an awareness of multiperspectival worldviews. She articulates scepticism on the status quo of democracy and discusses post-factual sources of danger and right-wing populist thinking. Her work may not reveal an escape from ingrained conditions without prospects, yet she can give a symbolic voice to the minorities, the poor and the expropriated and thereby possibly build a bridge between different life plans, like she did for the photographic series „Time Gates“. With these large-format light boxes the artist literally brings the light of public perception to the drama of everyday life.
For the show „liquid democracy“ Piorkowska, who lives and works in Vienna since 2003, produces a video, which can be played via youtube: A camera documents how the artist is packaging individual soaps with the label „liquid democracy“, inserting them in an envelope and sending them to different politicians like Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Political enemy images for artists and intellectuals rarely were clearer than today, as right-wing populist parties and their global representatives like Kaczynski, Le Pen, Orban, Strache, Trump (alphabetic order) threaten the world order. They were elected in democratic, neoliberal nations, that are dismantling the social welfare state for decades, where grave injustice is prevailing and where people are disappointed. Now they rebel against the establishment and their political representatives. „Liquid democracy“ asks many questions: Why is the resistance turning right? Where has the organization of left protest gone? When are radical measures finally be taken to change a system that divides the world in two classes? How could it get so far, especially after the experiences of the 1930’s/40’s.
Text: Angela Stief, Curator