ANDA ROTTENBERG- KNITTING JOB
Some of Martyna Ścibior’s pieces visually reminiscent the paintings of Australian Aborigines: huge, coaxial, irregular diamond shapes created out of tiny color spots, painted one by one along shaky nervous line. Other works remind enlarged computer screen with barely visible drawing emerging out of shaky ‘pixels’, scribbled with a pen on canvas. Common for both is time-consuming, monotonous production process – in terms of rhythm and recurrence similar to small hand gestures during ‘divine trans’ performed by primeval Australian inhabitants, but also to commonly feminine knitting, crocheting and embroidery. Abstract design reminding raster emerges out of economical, regular, trained and semi-mechanical process, which demands the use of hands only and does not require strained concentration but a slight vigilance when changing stitch or color. It is work, which allows multitasking, the presence of others, small talks or singing – like the famous treaty of polish countryside philosopher Wieslaw Myśliwski that had been written while plucking feathers and shelling beans.
The creativeness of this young Warsaw based artist is rooted there, in the disappearing countryside custom of night talks during work. This knowledge corrects the perception of her works; we stop to associate them with Australia and we start to notice colorful crocheted overlays, or maybe laced remains of wool, which create multifunctional shawls useful in winter to cover the body, or to cover a table. Using this analogy we reach the gender territory, tautological gestures used by Polish female artists of previous generation: knitting work, potatoes peeling, setting up the backyard gardens by Julita Wójcik; Elżbieta Jabłońska’s kitchen works and her heroic motherhood; knitted knots and silk sculptures stitched on a sewing machine by Zuzanna Janin. ‘Female activities’ acquired and shown in front of the audience, alongside seditious Maddonnas by Katarzyna Górna, Cheerleaders by Katarzyna Kozyra or the Virgins series by Marta Deskur, finally Bogna Burska’s arachnology, they all indicated the second wave of feminism in Polish art. And coexisted with the most rapid current of critical art characteristic for the turn of the century – however pompous it may sound.
However, Martyna Ścibior’s gestures are neither tautological, nor demonstrative. The artist does not create objects, but copies the substance of ‘ritual’, repetitive activity. And not to demonstrate the female enslavement, but on the contrary, show the way out of everyday, out of social responsibilities laid upon women. Raster drawn with the use of acrylic paint and pen, which is the timber of her paintings, is read as transfiguration of the process of creation itself and the emotional tension that accompanies it. The drawing full of distensions and rips emerging out of shaky pulsating matter explains the artist’s intentions. Artist’s statement is stressed by the use of nail polish, but also by titles. They talk about ‘getting up from knees’, so about emancipation, indirectly about the previous enslavement. But also about reaching the personal freedom neither by rejecting the social role, nor bringing the female-assigned activities from home to a gallery space, so stressing the rank and value of underestimated and overlooked female labor, but by skillful extraction of chosen activities from the duties’ territory and giving oneself the permission to use them to build personal autonomy.