Hanna Nowicka-Grochal
Places dubbed as artists residencies, offer a platform for more than a mere artistic confrontation. It is not a concrete product, which a work of art is, but it is a journey as a quest for one’s identity, confrontation with such places, their specific time (time only for creative work), and people whom you meet there, as well as your own self which are important. In this context, I envisage myself as a nomad carrying his own idea of life and idea of work, realizing that these are but some among many elements. Everything the nomad meets on his/her way, in an encounter with place, whether it is an unknown landscape and light or an object which becomes a “fetish”. What becomes the most important however, is the creative process and things accompanying it themselves. Every journey is a different personal quest. An encounter with a place like Civitella Ranieri Center was a very inspiring creative experience at the present stage of my work and the topic I have recently been dealing with. During my residency I worked on the realization entitled “The Pleasure out of Reach” – an installation prepared to be displayed at an exhibition in New York (“Architectures of Gender: Contemporary Women’s Art in Poland”). I completed one of the objects constituting the installation, a blown-up rubber hammock that resembled something between a body and an object. Hanging it above the heads of the spectators in a beautiful cypress alley leading to a castle very much enhanced the symbolism of the suspended bed, of anything that can be associated with feeling pleasure, relaxing, dreaming as well as with the insatiable desire for pleasure, self-realization and illusions, both emotional and bodily ones. As is commonly known, emotions always involve the body. This work has perfectly fitted into the place and its symbolic illusoriness.