Anna Niesterowicz: Disgrace
Residency at the Department of Presence

  • Anna Niesterowicz: Disgrace

The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw invites visitors to the launch of Disgrace, a new work by Anna Niesterowicz opening the Department of Presence’s September edition, Pride and Prejudice. New Practices of Dignity. Niesterowicz enters into a dialogue with her 2006 piece of the same title, produced almost six months after the parliamentary elections in Poland and one month prior to the birth of Twitter –an integral part of  political communication today.

In that work, the artist investigated the phantasms, fears and national prejudices rooted in the Polish language used since the very beginning of modernity to describe Poland as surrounded by a ‘sea of strangers’. To this end, Niesterowicz juxtaposed 1930s-propaganda prints with excerpts from online forums that, at the time (2006) played a role similar to Twitter.

In her 2018 piece, at a time when social media dictates the conditions of political discourse and the dissemination of half-truths and fake news influence the shape of public debate, Niesterowicz surveys the ways in which hate speech/the language of hatred has emerged over the years. Simultaneously, she draws attention to the new manifestations of political manipulation and rhetorical plays brought on by technological acceleration.

As she pointed out in 2006, the language of inter-war propaganda was filled with strength, energy and confidence, especially when it appeared alongside modernist design. How did the language of propaganda look like 12 years ago, what shape does it take on today? Niesterowicz demonstrates how, despite apparent differences, we can recognize the same old clichés and mental prostheses supplemented, over time, with new misconceptions?

The artist remains, however, far from drawing any conclusions about the linear provenance of the fascist language or making simple analogies. Examining the tensions between the affective charge of expressed judgments and contemporary social divisions, Niesterowicz examines the collapse of language that leads to an inability to build a real view of the world or any genuine communication. The exhibition is accompanied by a debate about tribal languages and the new identification systems harbouring contemporary hate speech. Anna Niesterowicz; Dr Mira Marcinów, philosopher and the author of The History of Polish Madness; Olga Byrska, researcher and cultural critic; and journalists Marek Beylin and Jakub Wencel will take part in the discussion.

Anna Niesterowicz

Visual artist, author of installations, video art, drawings and illustrations. She graduated from the faculty of Sculpture at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts; she defended her degree piece at the studio of Prof. Grzegorz Kowalski. The art of Niesterowicz combines autobiographical elements with a broader commentary on social relationships and tensions. The artist is interested in codes and linguistic constructs as well as everything which is “lost in translation” and impossible to explain. Niesterowicz navigates the area of irrational associations that remain “outside of the culture”, which are usually the result of a misunderstanding, and yet they directly refer to the reality and influence it.
 

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