Arts Thread

I never thought I would end up living in the UK, finding my identity in Edinburgh out of the closet —a child of Post Communism, the late 90's, Christian traditions and Eastern European shame, exploring his identity. My recent developments focus on exploring the closet, its meaning, place, experience in queerness, and its position in my life. In “Tendencies”, Eve Sedgwick describes queerness as “the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning (…)” I see this possibility in the growth of potatoes and their spirit of resilience and wilderness. I grow misplaced potatoes in the domestic environment of a closet. It also responds to the storage of root vegetables and summer preserves in most Polish households. Rising in conservative surroundings often saw me hiding personal feelings, emotions, desires and identity. Working with my individual experiences and queer theories creates a catalyst for my practice and development. The resolved aluminium casts use potatoes and gherkins assemblages with the collected rose, thistles, blackberry and found sticks. The combination of materials responds to my heritage and place in the world, between Poland and Scotland, creating a dialogue about belonging, maturing and existing. My practice moves fluidly between the sculpture and painting. I use expressive actions and movement to create lively, rich responses that challenge materiality and spatial relations. The different ways of working with paint allow me to build tension and diversity in images. I accumulate responses inspired by gardening and observations in garden ecology. I do this by developing my vegetable garden, visiting local allotments, and comparing queer theories against gardens ecology and my observations. I use the images of slugs, moths, and stick insects on purpose, attempting to portray the homo-experience from a different perspective, non-concerned with sexual, erotic identity, but with the low place in society. The settings of gardens create responses to Derek Jarman's Dungeness Cottage and my family's traditions of growing plants and engaging with the land. The power of secrets and personal incidents that queer life holds influences my practice and allows me to reclaim my identity through painting, making, and performing.