Jasmina Cibic: The Palace / Agnieszka Kurant: Errorism / Céline Condorelli & Wendelien van Oldenborgh: Work, Work, Work (Work)

Muzeum Sztuki is to hold three exhibitions by four female artists that investigate the different shades of collectivity and abstraction. Another common thread in these projects is an attempt to reconsider the political potential of culture. They will be put on display in the historic seat of the institution, a former industrialist palace. 

The series starts with Jasmina Cibic: The Palace—a play about solidarity in the face of crisis and the art of manipulation told through film, photography, sculpture and sound. The exhibition centres around the film titled The Gift. Using allegory, Cibic tests the concept according to which culture can be used to counteract social polarisation. This project displays echoes of alternative economies based on generosity and solidarity, yet it also includes some historical examples of the failure of the instrumentalisation of culture. Perhaps such failed attempts to implement “soft power” strategies can encourage us to rethink the potential of culture’s resilience to colonisation by political powers.  

Agnieszka Kurant traces new forms of collectivity through cognitive economies. Her art explores the invisible: the flows of virtual capital, immaterial labour, concealed forms of exploitation, and fictions impacting reality. The artist has developed novel methods of producing artistic forms, speculating about the future of work and creativity while examining the blurred boundary between the natural and the artificial, the human and the nonhuman. The exhibition Errorism focuses on the simultaneously creative and destructive role of error in modern automation and algorithmisation.

Finally, the exhibition by Céline Condorelli and Wendelien van Oldenborgh, entitled Work, Work, Work (Work) is the result of cooperation on a project which centres around the most crucial space of the museum, i.e. the Neoplastic Room, designed in 1947 by Władysław Strzemiński. Condorelli and van Oldenborgh arrange meetings or create the conditions for them to take place. Recalling traces of the recent past, the artists pose questions about the current conditions for creating culture and community in relation to global changes of work-related concepts. What do factories, into which museums, theatres and community centres have transformed, produce? What are the interdependencies between visual culture and industrial production? How does culture support or impede the struggle of women and minorities for representation in public spaces?

The exhibition Jasmina Cibic: The Palace is held under the Honorary Patronage of the National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning. 

The partner of the performative programme within the exhibition Jasmina Cibic: The Palace was the Grażyna and Kiejstut Bacewicz University of Music in Łódź.

The exhibition Errorism: Agnieszka Kurant is co-organised with FOTOFESTIWAL. 

Tools for Imagination is an artwork by Céline Condorelli produced by Ramdom (Italy) in collaboration with FRAC Lorraine, Metz (France), Tenerife Espacio de Las Artes, Tenerife (Spain), Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź (Poland), South London Gallery (UK) and MACRO (Italy). 

The project is supported by the Italian Council (8th edition 2020) program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. 

The production of Wendelien van Oldenborgh’s film was supported by the Mondriaan Fund. 

The partner of the production of Wendelien van Oldenborgh’s film is the Film School in Łódź / vnLab.