UAPLGB

The sculpture is covered with a pattern and ornament that is a combination of three letters. Part of the pattern present on the fabric are records of conversations with people with the experience of emigration. The recorded conversations are about their assimilation and the lack of it in the countries they chose to live in. The work is a spatial sculpture, referring to the project of "social sculpture" by Katarzyna Kobro. It is a combination of action with language, work with spatial form and social themes inherent in the avant-garde of the early 21st century. The protagonists of the fabric are the letters Ґ, J, X. I chose them by breaking down the Polish, Ukrainian and English alphabets. I am merging them into one character. In this way, a form of metisage is created, a combination of different elements, a blending. The term itself comes from Chicana feminism, its main reference is the Greek word metis - hybrid. 
The form of writing tells about the experience gained at the intersection of cultures, languages and countries. The mark on the fabric is constructed by writing down in embroidery, the content of interviews, conducted as part of the research, focusing on people with the experience of migration. The conversations are written in embroidery in English, Ponglish, Brokenenglish, Polish, Ukrainian. It alludes to the mixing of languages described in the biblical story of the Tower of Babel and to the nomadism of modern societies.
The combination of viewing and reading the fabric with the possibility of entering its interior is the moment when language becomes sculpture. When it can be experienced intellectually and symbolically as an activity of the subconscious.
The left side of the written embroidery, which can be experienced by going inside the sculpture, is an abstract notation. Language is an artificial and abstract creation, it can divide and is sometimes the cause of conflicts and wars. In one of the many interviews I did with migrants there was a story about accent and exclusion by accent - this story I record in the letter J. The protagonist talks about the sense of rejection she experiences when she speaks because she speaks with an accent. I record her experience in the sculpture, and in the form of the work I allude to a tent, a shelter: language as a source of oppression and language as a tool of liberation. The letters hold hands as if they have found a common love space.

Photos by Mateusz Torbus oraz Michał Algebra courtesy of  Emigration Museum Gdynia 2022