“...Julita Wojcik’s [b.1971] objects, installations, and performances
have been conceived in correspondence with everyday household activities that
she seems to enjoy. Belonging to a generation that tries to erase the line drawn
between art and life, she consciously turns the banality of life into a means of
communication with an audience. Her [...] works have nothing to do with the
standard academic education in sculpture that she received. [...] her infamous
peeling of potatoes piece in the neo-classic Warsaw Zacheta Gallery [...]
infuriated both the regular and professional audience. The decision of the
audience in the case of Julita Wojcik was clear: this is not art! She insists on
the opposite view: she is aware of the lost link between art and the audience
and she wants to energize the discussion about art”.
- Aneta Szylak, Construction Works, in: Architectures of Gender:
Contemporary Women’s Art in Poland, exhibition catalogue, SculptureCenter,
2003
|
Julita
Wojcik,
My Garden,
2003, realization and action at Court House Square, Long Island City, as
part of the exhibition
Architectures
of Gender: Contemporary Women’s Art in Poland
at the SculptureCenter, 2003. Photo courtesy
of SculptureCenter. |
She
has realized numerous public art projects, most of them including a performative
element, in many cities in Europe, as well as in New York. For instance, by
moving gardening from the suburbs to the downtown of a big city she played out
the absurdity of such a relocation. In 2003 she planted her little garden on the
lawn in front of Long Island City’s Court House Square in New York City. In this
project, realized for the exhibition Architectures of Gender: Contemporary
Women’s Art in Poland at the SculptureCenter, Wojcik played on the New
York’s notion of a private garden as a luxury: she made it visible and
accessible to the community. The artist was present in her specially designed
apron and gardening tools, working on an everyday basis amidst passers-by who
could talk to her. “She constructs her identity as an amateur, a hobbyist who
is close to nature and who naively believes in the positive power of beauty.
Wojcik considers her gardening project as a beautification of the city and
stubbornly avoids political interpretations of her work as much as she avoids
casting it in bronze”. - Aneta Szylak, ibid |
|
“The subversive meaning of her work [...], lies in the humorous acceptance and,
sometimes, even pleasure of performing the domestic responsibilities that are
considered “traditionally feminine.” […] the incorporation of everyday household
tasks into [...] artworks is not a criticism of the social position of women but
rather an attempt to integrate art into everyday life. It is also a way of
balancing their domestic and artistic roles so that they are not forced into
being limited to one of them or the other”.
- Aneta Szylak, ibid |
Julita
Wojcik, 100% cotton, 2004. A portrait of an institution – the Museum
of the History of the City of Lodz located in the palace of "Polish cotton
king" Izaak Poznanski, realized for
Palimpsest Muzeum
– All Polish Biennale, I Lodz Biennale,
Lodz, 2004. Photo courtesy of the artist. |
|
Julita
Wojcik, View Maker, 2004, video still.
Collection of
the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
Photo
courtesy of the artist.
|
Her
focus on non-institutional situations is also obvious in The Dream of a
Provincial Girl (2000) - an international artists’ project (series of 3
exhibitions), which she co-curated with Paulina Olowska in a private
apartment in Sopot, Poland, featuring artists from Estonia, Lithuania, Scotland,
and Poland. As the two artists described the project: “It was our aim to show
different tendencies in Contemporary Art, both in Eastern and Western Europe.
All of the artists are uninterested in looking for Cosmopolitan Art; they have a
strong belief in intimacy and their personalities”. -
Julia Wojcik
&
Paulina Olowska, “Marzenie prowincjonalnej dziewczyny / Dream of Provincial
Girl,” Sopot, February 22 –March 15, 2000. |
|
|
