Izabella Gustowska, Relative Features of Resemblance, 1979-1980, Film, 11 minutes 20 seconds.
Music/film/photography/performance. Expressions of Feminism to commemorate Natalia LL
Friday, September 2 from 6-8 PM ET
A.I.R. Gallery
155 Plymouth Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
As part of Sleepless in Warsaw, A.I.R. Gallery presents a 30-min. concert/durational sound environment Metamorphosis/Dafne (2021) by New York based Polish artist Monika Weiss followed by a talk with Izabella Gustowska about Women’s Art one of the first feminist exhibitions in Poland and her film Relative Features of Resemblance, (1979-1980). As well, this event will commemorate one of the most important figures in Polish feminist art, Natalia LL who passed on August 12, a week after opening of Sleepless in Warsaw.
Metamorphosis/Dafne is a sound composition devoted to victims of gendered violence and was inspired by the story of Daphne (in Polish “Dafne”), the mythological nymph who escaped rape by self-transformation into a tree. In the artist words, the sound evokes “the escape from the violence as marked by her death but also by reincarnation into a new life form.” Movements 1-4 (Kataigis, Drzewo Życia, Fonî, and Keîmai) are based on the recordings of the artist’s acoustic piano improvisations, later recomposed by Weiss into an electronic sound. For the 5th movement ( Metá ), the artist recorded eight vocalists individually and later remixed those tracks into a microtonal and antiphonal chorus. Metamorphosis was mastered at the Experimental Media Arts (EMA) and will be included as an online sound companion to the artist’s forthcoming 6-months public project Nirbhaya, scheduled to open in 2023 at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, the Gateway to United Nations in New York.
At the end of the 1970s, Gustowska, until then primarily involved in photography, began working with film, conducting the important intermedia project Relative Features of Resemblance. She invited several pairs of twin girls to join her, recording them during meetings held over weeks, months and the passing years. In doing so, she explored the experiences, feelings and sensations of the women, who continue to be an enduring inspiration to her. According to Gustowska: I remember the first works in the series of Relative Features of Resemblance and my thinking about twinning as an unusual example of duplicity, and how my twinning with my brother seemed poor in relation to the intense biological bond of two women -monozygotic twins. The twins, W. and H. the heroic heroines of this series, seemed identical to me, and how I decided that the body of one would be the matrix for the other.
Women's Art at Galeria ON, Poznań, 1980 was one of the first exhibitions of art created by women in Poland. The curators of the exhibition were the artists and participants Izabella Gustowska and Krystyna Piotrowska. Gustowska presented her film Relative Features of Resemblance. Other participants were: Natalia LL, Anna Kutera, Ewa Partum , Maria Pinińska-Bereś, and Teresa Tyszkiewicz. The exhibition was a presentation of media art grown on the basis of conceptualism and performance art created by women. Women's Art was a feminist exhibition - all the artists presenting their works undertook a conscious critique of patriarchal society, making statements about sexuality and identity of fellow women. Galeria ON was run for 35 years by female artists affiliated with the Magdalena Abakanowicz University of Arts in Poznań.
Natalia LL (born 1937–died 2022) was a pioneer of conceptual avant-garde Polish art, and feminist art. Working in photography, drawing, performance, and video art, Natalia LL was known across the globe for her witty critique of consumer society, investigations of sexuality and gender, and systematic experimentation with the laws of probability. Analyzing aesthetic and erotic features of consumption, her works have a captivating and yet perverse allure. Natalia LL’s film work is closely related to her artistic practice, mainly photography and performance art. From 1957–63 she studied at State High School of Fine Arts in Wrocław under the supervision of Professor S. Dawski, where she completed her MSc. In 1964 she received the Diploma of the Association of Polish Artists Photographers. In 1970 she co-founded the PERMAFO Gallery in Wroclaw. She was deeply engaged in the International Feminist Art movement and took part in various symposiums and exhibitions. Awards and honorary posts: The Kosciuszko Foundation Scholarship, New York, 1977; Commissioner of the I and II International Drawing Triennale in Wrocław, 1978-1981; vice chairman of the IV and VI International Drawing Triennale in Wrocław, 1989-1995; “Verein Kulturkontakte” Scholarship, Vienna, 1991; “PRO-HELVETIA” Scholarship, Switzerland, 1994; from 2004 she was senior lecturer of the Fine Arts Academy in Poznań. Lives and works in Wroclaw. In May 2007 she was awarded the Silver Medal for “Meritorious Service to Culture Gloria Artis”;, and in January 2013 she received the Katarzyna Kobro Award. Four years ago she was honored with the Rosa Schapire Art Prize.
Over the past twenty-five years, the prominent New York-based artist Monika Weiss (b. 1964, Warsaw, Poland) has developed a transdisciplinary practice composed of sound, moving image, sculpture, performance and drawing. Recurring material and conceptual motives in Weiss’ work include sonic space, water, the body, slow movement, doubling and gestures of lament, performed and choreographed in response to collective trauma. Her synesthetic art resists closure as it explores states of transformation and oscillates, as Mark McDonald (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) noted, “between proposal and presence, the allusive and the tangible”. Weiss, who lectures as professor at Sam Fox School, Washington University in St. Louis, is featured in international exhibitions, publications and collections including solo shows at CCA Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw, Lehman College Art Gallery, NYC, and Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago, Chile. In 2021 a new bi-lingual monograph Monika Weiss - Nirbhaya was published by the Centre for Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, with texts including feminist art historian Griselda Pollock, The Met curator Mark McDonald, and Indian-American poet Meena Alexander. As part of The Met series Artists on Artworks, a 30-min. film with Monika Weiss speaking on her work and on the work of Goya, premiered in 2021.
Izabela Gustowska (born 1948, Poznan, Poland) is considered an artist who laid the foundation for feminist and multimedia art in Poland. Izabella Gustowska’s art is a phenomenon that is difficult to compare with anything else. Among other things, she creates large multimedia performances, which are peculiar total works, where videos, photographs, projections intermingle with performances and real situations. She also creates graphic prints, paintings and objects. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, where she now lectures as a professor. Her major pieces include Relative Features of Resemblance, Dreams, Life Is a Story. Her work has been exhibited at numerous group shows including Biennale International de Sao Paulo (1983, 1987) Expressiv- Central Art Since 1960, Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna (1987), Hirshhorn Museum Washington DC (1988), XLIII Espositzione Internazionale d’Arte – La Biennale di Venezia, Architectures of Gender Contemporary Women’s Art in Poland, Sculpture Center, New York (2003), Gender Check, and Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Vienna (2009). Her works are in many institutional collections, including the MoMA, National Museum in Wrocław, National Museum in Warsaw, and Museum Susch.
