The exhibition Wasn’t Built in a Day, presented at the Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art, is a part of Main Programme of Krakow Photomonth Festival.
Artists: Maciej Cholewa, Michał Jankowski, Nagrobki (Maciej Salamon and Adam Witkowski), Grażyna Monika Olszewska/Rufus, Marta Romankiv, Łukasz Surowiec, Aga Szreder and Rafał Żwirek, Andrzej Wasilewski
Curator: Stanisław Ruksza
The exhibition Wasn’t Built in a Day is a visual tale told by artists about the ‘bygone’ Krakow that has hosted Photomonth over the past two decades; and also about the present-day city, for, as Maciej Maleńczuk once sang, ‘Nothing has changed.’ Artists refer to suppressed histories and contemporary symptoms of deliberate effacement, of sweeping under the carpet. At the same time, it is an exhibition about contemporary Poland as a whole, with Krakow an incarnation of the country’s spirit. Or at least some think so…
In the following five ‘chambers’ of the basement of Bunkier Sztuki’s temporary location, rooms christened with peculiar title-concepts for the duration of the exhibition, we view ourselves through the logic of our compulsion for repetition: our oblivion, aspirations and disappointments, extremes of social inequality, reinforced representations of power, modernising myths and phantom pains, past disasters, and an inexhaustible surge of energy seeking a meaningful outlet.
Among other things, it is a tale of the ‘invisible’; about an old man, a fixture of the streets, asking for a zloty, who remembers little, or at least feigns so. About a predilection for Sarmatian funeral ceremonies (alas, today it all comes out somewhat slapdash and askew). On the deconstruction of national topoi and attendant sexual repressiveness. And finally, as befits a former royal city, about whether there are any spare thrones available—or at least a stool.
