Pomegranate 💣🍇

installation, virtual reality, scenography, sculptures, video, computer games, AI, AR

Barbara Gryka & Agata Konarska

The joint effort begins with the question of whether it is possible to build happiness in reference to a vision of an idealistic city by the Renaissance philosopher Tommaso Campanella. The goal of this utopian idea, known as The City of The Sun, was to describe the system, in which human life would be as close to nature as possible. Furthermore, the artists asked children who had to leave Ukraine due to war about the ideal place to live.

During the exhibition, we can experience a virtual adventure of exploring urban space which consists of 3D scans of bombarded Ukrainian buildings overlaid with the textures of the children’s houses created during the workshops. The rain has passed, and colorful cardboard architecture is still sagging under the weight of water but the houses are drying in the sun with their creators’ messages hidden inside. These hopeful designs can be explored on the backs of animals: bison, lynx, stork, and eagle. On the one hand, their symbolic meaning refers to East mythology, but on the other, we have national symbols that stimulate the forming of nations’ identities and uphold them.

Qualities related to bravery, strength, courage, but also fertility, and increasing the size of the nation are being glorified in these types of attributes. They reduce the men’s role to fighting and women’s to childbirth. Symbols are used to strengthen the stereotypes and division and to persuade the people that the nation is the greatest value and the most important form of society. This kind of thinking normally leads to not only the desire to win but also to domination and in consequence to provoking aggression towards another.

Is it possible to create a place in which several nationalities are able to live in total peace, beyond all divisions?

According to the artists, our goal right now is to have an impact on our future, which will be accompanied by catastrophic notes of the military, energy, migration, and climate crisis. By accepting responsibility for future generations, they are leaving the field clear for children. Their abstract imaginations about a place in which we can all feel good transform into art. The joint activities are an inspiration for the new architecture that is based on qualities like intuitiveness and naivety. Children’s vision of an ideal city manifests itself in things that adults do not notice. It becomes a mirror, in which issues of nationality, patriotism, human kindness, and the relativity of happiness reflect.

Curated by Agata Cukierska, Katarzyna Kalina
Text by Agata Cukierska, Katarzyna Kalina
Kronika Center for Contemporary Art, Bytom (PL)
Pictures by Tomasz Kawecki

Dimensions: 632 x 315 h:300cm; 850 x 825 h:300cm; 488 x 312 h:300cm; 488 x 837 h:300cm