Self-annihilation
2023, installation, ceramics, plastics, earth, ash, mixed media, object 75 x 60 x 80 cm
A sphere of tongues intertwines with a layer of earth and ash. The petrified tongues are like relics of speech, symbolising stories that have been told. The awareness of this structure’s movement evokes a sense that it will become a shapeless lump of earth. Self-annihilation is only a matter of time.
„The exhibition ‘One Thought Finally Triggers Everything’ is dedicated to the Wrocław artist Liliana Lewicka (1932–1989). (…) on the one hand, it remains a form of research, attempting to reconstruct a forgotten artistic personality. On the other hand, it is a specific polyphony revealing a panorama of non-obvious analogies and conclusions based on fragments and snippets documenting the Wrocław artist’s activity. The artists invited to participate in the project, who never met Lewicka, follow memories, traces or clues. Their search often involves coincidences which, within the exhibition’s narrative, become a story of memory, the flow and decay of organic matter, and the need for sensitivity to being with nature and being together.”
Piotr Lisowski, excerpt from the curatorial text
„Karina’s work, previously exhibited in the gallery space atop a mound of fertile soil piled up specifically for the ball of tongues, is here confronted with a reality that is entirely unstaged – a compost heap overgrown with pumpkin, covered with soil several months ago. It is not really compost at all, but a heap of fruit and vegetables that market traders failed to sell, and which had begun to ferment, rot and go mouldy. The artist’s desire to observe processes that are repressed, concealed, hidden, and silenced finds a wonderful breeding ground here. Her ceramic tongues, like some utopian human community, in a frenzied rush to experience on a non-technological, neo-primitive level, throw themselves upon this fermenting heap, upon this organic process of transformation buzzing in secret beneath the topsoil, and as if seeking fulfilment by licking and reversing the aforementioned process of the birth of speech. The element of life degrades culture.”
Mariusz Sibila, excerpt from the curatorial text
