Grand Theatre is Grand National Opera is National

This diptych consists of two large textile works that I made at the invitation of the Grand Theatre–National Opera in Warsaw. Each piece features a paraphrased version of the institution’s name: “The National Opera is National” and “The Grand Theatre is Grand.”

The work is based on a very simple gesture of repeating words, which I often use in my practice. This repetition does not explain or clarify anything new. Instead, it shows how institutional language works. The Grand Theatre is grand because it is grand. The National Opera is national because it is national. Language here is not used to justify meanings, but to establish them.

This tautology functions in the work as a performative gesture. Uttering the sentence does not describe reality, but produces it. It confirms grandness and national character as obvious, non negotiable qualities, closed to questioning. In this way, I point to a mechanism in which the authority of cultural institutions is based on a self confirming language that leaves no room for dissent.

At the same time, the cool literalness of these statements carries a subtle irony, without mockery or satire. I do not spell anything out directly, allowing tension to emerge between content and form. The viewer is left to confront the absurdity of these seemingly neutral messages on their own. Language becomes a kind of institutional architecture, the foundation on which symbolic power is built.

The choice of textile and embroidery introduces an additional contrast. Soft, pliable material and handwork, usually associated with privacy, care, and fragility, are set against the monumental, closed language of the institution. This collision reveals the tension between the human dimension of labor and the rigid, authoritarian structure of a message that allows no alternative narratives.

For me, this diptych functions both as an affirmation and as a critical analysis of the language of cultural institutions. It shows how obviousness becomes a tool of power, and repetition a way of maintaining it.