Nothing is more precious than Damaged Goods 🍞

installation, 7 sculptures – proprietary technique, 4 videos, dimensions variable

The artwork consists of four videos presented in the scenography of a sculptural installation. The artist refers to the experience of isolation, staying in a confined community, and to the biopolitics that took on extreme forms in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.

When the pandemic broke out, Barbara Gryka was staying at an artistic residency in Spain. After coming back to Poland, she was directed to obligatory quarantine in a holiday resort that had been hastily adapted by local authorities for a place of isolation. The way it worked was chaotic, overly restrictive and full of uncertainty, which was typical for the government’s actions in the first weeks of the plague. People in the quarantine were left to themselves, without access to medical care or any kind of systematic supervision. In turn, they were told not to leave the venue under any circumstances, but nobody cared about enforcing this prohibition.

Complete strangers placed in the quarantine with each other were forced to form a temporary community, governed by the uncertainty related to epidemic threat, and also by the boredom of isolation.

Three of the videos presented within this artwork contain footage that the artist shot while in isolation: snapshots from the daily lives of people in quarantine, having fun, feeling euphoric, depressed or pensive. Moreover, they reflect the growing tension related not only to the viral threat, but also the aggression towards resort dwellers displayed by people from the outside and internet users, blaming them of spreading the disease.

The fourth video was shot by Gryka after the quarantine ended. The artist quotes what Alexander Lukashenko said about the pandemic. The Belarusian dictator reacting by advising people to drink vodka as a preventive measure would be funny if the situation wasn’t so tragic. Polish policy against Covid-19 was unlike the Belarusian, but still there is a common denominator between the strategies of these − and many other − countries: in view of danger, politics evolves towards biopolitics, and the authorities, instead of serving the society, start to literally rule people’s lives.

In her installation There are no things more valuable than the broken ones the artist juxtaposes the films with sculptures. Grotesque figures, placed alternately with the screens, resemble countryside scarecrows and have been manufactured in a similar way: the artist built them from used clothes, found objects, and waste materials.

Next to her own experience, Gryka makes reference to the works of two historical artists. The first one is Władysław Hasior (1928-1999), one of the pioneers of European assemblage, who was highly sensitive to lower levels of visual culture, degraded matter, objects suffering wear and tear, manifestations of daily life; the title of Gryka’s work is actually a quote from Hasior. The second person evoked in There are no things more valuable than the broken ones is Józef Gielniak (1932-1972), an extremely talented printmaker, who had serious health issues since early age: he suffered from tuberculosis and spent his entire adult life in pulmonological sanatoriums. This is also where he did his creative work, forced into isolation by his disease.

Curated by Marta Gendera
MOS Gorzów Wielkopolski (PL)
Text by Stach Szabłowski
Translation by Zofia Piętek
Pictures by Szymon Rogiński

Dimensions: 754 x 1021 h:447