Collection

The project entitled "Going out into Poland" by Honorata Martin is a two-part project that comprises the artist’s personal experience and a video documentation, presented in the form of installations. Martin began her journey across Poland having left everything that defined her social status. All she took was a change of clothing, a sleeping bag and her dog. The artist started her march in Gdańsk and covered 30 kilometres per day, visiting small towns and asking local residents for shelter and assistance. The documentation of the journey made by the artist constitutes a record of a radical existential experience, depersonalization and fear. But it is also an exceptional and cruel portrait of second-class Poland, usually seen by residents of big cities only when travelling. The work shows a new dimension of the artistic involvement, without referring to known notions and justified ideological assumptions, but rather using personal engagement and risk. There is no discourse on changes or modernization of the world here. Instead, we can see a realistic attempt to experience community.