VI LEVER PÅ POLSK

The duo show of Magda Buczek 
and Bartek Arobal Kociemba
featuring the work of
Magnus Cederlund

Lever på polsk (Living the Polish Way) is a Danish phrase referring to cohabitation without marriage, which artists Magda Buczek and Bartek ‘Arobal’ Kociemba interpret in their works as something non-normative, existing outside of current systems and comfort zones. In Denmark, religious dissenters and rural (Catholic) Polish immigrants lived ‘the Polish way’, as they couldn’t legalise their marriages in the Protestant country. This selection of works by Arobal and Buczek centre on the idea of their national identity, defined both as a heritage and burden. The exhibition is their exploration of Central Europe observed from a distance, an altar for the Polish experience; something simultaneously formative and traumatising. Their Polishness in Denmark is exercised in the contexts of shared liminal experiences such as migration, pregnancy and motherhood, queerness, disease, and economic precarity.

The exhibition opens in November, a month that begins with the Day of the Dead Celebrations followed by Polish Independence Day (11.11). This year, it also is a month that follows the biggest and most intense citizen unrest that Poland has witnessed since the fall of communism. The works of the artists examine and play with all these cultural, social and political contexts.

Works displayed:

Mi casa es tu casa, Bartek ‘Arobal’ Kociemba, 2020

Polish Drapery, Magda Buczek, 2020

The double portrait of Buczek and Kociemba, created by Arobal, is an aesthetic nod to writer, painter, poet and creator of The Wedding, Stanisław Wyspiański, who was a member of the Young Poland movement. The Wedding, a defining work of Polish drama, describes the perils of the national drive toward self-determination following the two unsuccessful uprisings against the Partitions of Poland, in November 1830 and January 1863. The double portrait also functions as a performative introduction to the artists’ shared studio space, created for the purpose of the exhibition and presenting a rich Polish context.

The portrait hangs on a wall created with hanging net curtains, a Polish version of curtains. These net curtains are particularly foreign in Denmark, where windows are rarely covered. These looming curtains are a symbol of Polish prudery and bashfulness, and even a sign of Catholicism – Polish women are draped in white not just for their weddings, but for First Communion as well. This site-specific installation was created for the exhibition.

The Altar

The Queer Map of Poland, Bartek Arobal Kociemba, 2020

Beaten Head I, Beaten Head II, Bartek Arobal Kociemba, 2020

These three works were created as a response to Andrzej’s Duda and the Polish Catholic Church’s pledge to fight ‘LGBTQ ideology’ during last June’s presidential election in Poland. The Queer Map of Poland is a reference to some 100 Polish municipalities, almost a third of the country, that have adopted resolutions which led to them being called ‘LGBT-free zones’. The self-portraits of Arobal were drawn based on photographs which the artist took of himself in 2009, two weeks after being beaten on the streets of Warsaw for appearing gay.

Castor Pollux Cervix, Magda Buczek, 2018

Father-Uncle, Magda Buczek, 2020

Castor and Pollux were twin brothers in Greek and Roman mythology. One of the best-known myths about them is how they became a constellation. During a battle, Castor, a mortal, was killed. Heartbroken at the death of his brother, Pollux prayed to Zeus to make Castor immortal, which meant that Pollux would have to give up half of his own immortality. Zeus agreed to the request, and so transformed the two brothers into the Gemini constellation. To this universal metaphor of brotherly love Buczek added a third, feminine element: cervix, the Latin name for the lower part of the uterus. The three names resembling the alternative alliance have been printed on soccer scarves – symbols of masculinity, pride, and support. This work is a part of Buczek’s SURPLUS series.

The Father-Uncle sculpture was brought to life from ‘waste’ by recycling clothes, leftover fabrics and ideas relating to Polish masculinity. It is a part of the series of head sculptures ‘One of Many’ that Buczek has been working on since 2020. Father-Uncle, composed out of used garments found in a garbage dump and a plastic cast of Venus of Milo, is a portrait of a national antihero, stuck on a microphone stand.

Hygge / Sofa / Viewpoint, Magda Buczek, Bartek ‘Arobal’ Kociemba, 2020

The installation takes its cue from the national flags of both countries and the idea of hygge, a Danish state of comfort and contentment from which one can safely observe what is happening in its neighbour country, ‘in Poland, which is to say nowhere’ (opening lines of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Rex, 1896).

Fortunes and Misfortunes of Miss MF, Magda Buczek, 2013 

Justina&CO.UK, artbook, Magda Buczek, 2014

Violetta Villas, Bartek ‘Arobal’ Kociemba, 2020 

Polish Women Sexual Fantasies for Wysokie Obcasy, Bartek ‘Arobal’ Kociemba, 2017

Buczek’s installation makes use of pages from a British 18th-century novel depicting The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders. It is usually assumed that the novel was written by Daniel Defoe, however, the original printing did not have an author, as it was an apparent autobiography. Born into extreme circumstances to a convict mother who is transported to the Colonial United States and raised in poverty, thanks to legitimate and illegitimate relationships and theft Molly Flanders ends up a millionaire. The pages from the novel are placed in emptied candy boxes, one of them notably being an Anthony Berg’s (Danish chocolate products company founded in 1884) chocolate box. 

Justina&co.uk can be decoded as ‘Justina and company’ meaning a non-fiction protagonist of a picaresque novel and her adventurous accomplices: Moll Flanders, Lulu and Fanny Hill. However, unlike her literary accomplices, Justina tirelessly carries on with the story as she naturally shifts from image to image, outside the grasp of the reader (voyeur), with her face always in the binding of the pages, at the edge of the paper. 

Violetta Villas (Czesława Gospodarek) was a Polish and international cabaret star, singer, actress, composer and songwriter famous throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Her voice was characterised as a coloratura soprano, which spanned over four octaves. Villas became a living icon celebrated for her extreme talent and flamboyant style and international, yet unfulfilled career including a Las Vegas residency and numerous collaborations with Sinatra, Dior and others. Villas died alone at the age of 74 having struggled with alcohol and morphine addiction as well as a delusional disorder.  

The cover depicts one of Kociemba’s friends, a Polish artist that graduated from Copenhagen School of Design and Technology, has been made especially for Wysokie Obcasy, a Polish feminist magazine since 1999 attached weekly to a popular daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza. This particular issue focused on the sexual fantasies of Polish women.

Justina’s Chapel, Magda Buczek, 2013

This sound installation features voices of the artist's three female friends and Buczek herself, reading excerpts from a private email exchange between the artist and her cousin, Justyna.  Justina (an anglicised version of her name) has lived in many places all over Europe. Her short, non-compromising messages to Buczek reveal the shadows and radiance of a precarious yet glamorous life of an Eastern European woman, a cleaner and a sex worker, committed to living her dream in the West. Despite the original recordings being made in Polish, you can read the English translation of the letters in the lightbox on the floor.

Trickster, Magda Buczek, photo collage, 2017

Buczek’s photo collage merges fashion photography from vintage Vogue issues and renaissance paintings with her own drawings. The main figure is presented partly as a saint, partly as a trickster. The image can be flipped and positioned upside down, like a tarot card. 

Mental Body, Bartek Arobal Kociemba, 2019

The cut-out drawing of his own naked body exhibited in a lightbox was made by Arobal for an exhibition called Creative Sick States; AIDS, Cancer, HIV, organised in Municipal Gallery Arsenal, a gallery in Poznań, Poland. This self-portrait is a gesture aimed at reclaiming the artist’s own carnality against social misconceptions of what it means to be seropositive. 

Once upon a time... Magda Buczek, 2020

The installation has Buczek read the lyrics of a popular Polish lullaby about a page, a king, and a princess translated into Danish by Google Translate. The lullaby is particularly gloomy and depicts a complicated queer affair between all three parties, ending dramatically with all of them being eaten by different domestic animals. The installation plays with the notion of language, and being lost in translation and was originally made and presented in Iceland in 2015.

Choice is a Privilege, Magda Buczek, 2020

Choice is a Privilege is Buczek’s commentary on the on-going female reproductive rights debate happening in Poland and across the world. In this instance the artist had the political slogan of her subversive fashion brand SURPLUS printed over her own hospital gown which she stole from Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen after giving birth to her daughter, Mila. The garment is set on a metal hanger, a popular tool for executing at-home illegal abortions.

Kitchen

All Saints, Bartek ‘Arobal’ Kociemba, 2020 

These portraits by Kociemba depict five victims of Polish homophobia, transphobia, and serophobia. Arobal created these drawings as a response to the anti-LGBTQ campaign launched by Andrzej Duda as a part of his presidential campaign last June.

Magda Buczek, photo by Magnus Cederlund, Copenhagen 2018

This picture of Magda Buczek taken by Danish photographer Magnus Cederlund, made it to his album Intime which documented the last 8 years of Cafe Intime, Copenhagen’s oldest queer bodega. In the photo you can see Buczek celebrating New Year’s Eve in 2019. The picture was taken 36 hours before the artist gave birth to her daughter, Mila.

Self Portrait, Pregnant, Bartek ‘Arobal’ Kociemba, 2016

‘Arobal’ Kociemba made this drawing in response to the launch of the protest movement for female reproductive rights in Poland. 

‘Is there something inherently queer about pregnancy itself, insofar as it profoundly alters one’s “normal” state, and occasions a radical intimacy with -- and radical alienation from -- one’s body? How can an experience so profoundly strange and wild and transformative also symbolize or enact the ultimate conformity?’

Maggie Nelson, Argonauts , Graywolf Press, 2015.

Footnotes: Family Archive

Pictures documenting the Danish life of both artists as well as its milestones: Bartek on the way of obtaining the Danish CPR (personal identification number), Magda after giving birth to Mila, family photos, picture from the recent protest in Copenhagen (made by Edyta Sørensen).