Zachęta – National Gallery of Art

exhibition concept, context and relationship building: Teresa Murak
curator: Joanna Kordjak
cooperation on behalf of Zachęta: Katarzyna Kołodziej
collaboration: Mateusz Rembieliński, Erik Fonkalsrud

Teresa Murak, a performer and sculptor engaging in activities in public space, is a precursor and one of the most important representatives of earth art in Poland.

From her first projects — such as Sowing (1972) in the Dziekanka student house, Procession (1974) or The Coming of Greenery in the Repassage Gallery (1975) — the artist’s trademark has been the use of biological processes: of sowing, growth, and decay.

At the exhibition in Zachęta, Teresa Murak’s oeuvre is presented both through a selection of the works she has made over the course of her several decades of artistic activity and through her newest works (often harking back in a variety of ways to earlier ones). An especially important place is occupied by works whose material is earth in its various forms, and also by the artist’s interventions into the landscape on both micro- and macro-scales: from the treading out of paths in the landscape to earth sculptures whose dimensions are formed by the human body.

In the process of Murak’s work is also inscribed an unceasing journey. The artist allows herself to be held by the places in which she then realises her works. She takes note and makes use of that which is pleasurable, low, everyday — actions and objects which are then raised to the level of the sacred.

The range of these journeys differs: from the local (a walk through the streets of a city) to the almost global. Lillehammer (2015–2016), the piece presented at the exhibition, continues the artist’s journey along the north–south axis, which already began in the first half of the 1970s.

A significant aspect of her journeys is an openness to participation — to meetings, to the building of relations and finally to the joy of communal creation.

Teresa Murak’s subject matter is time and entropy, which defined how the exhibition was prepared, as well as its functioning in terms of individual pieces. The process of their creation is essential here — a performance set out for weeks and months by the artist. Its crucial moments marked by Seeing — Outlining — Lifting, the time ‘in-between’ filled by waiting and keeping watch.

Organisation of space is the basic element of Murak’s artistic strategy. The scope and scale of her activities that have gone into creating this exhibition, on the one hand set out a distance — the Arctic Circle — and on the other hand, depth — 1,000 metres below ground. She also uses the space of the gallery building, especially the roof, for special purposes in her work, exploring it on multiple levels. The roof becomes an important area of her activity.

The coal sculpture made for the exhibition at the Zachęta is a continuation of her 2006 project, and was created over the last few months in close cooperation with people connected with the Halemba mine.