Non place / Nie miejsce
2024
Geppart Gallery, Piekarnia Żywa Kultura , Wrocław, PL
Curator: Patrycja Sikora
A non-place - what is it?
This is the question asked by an artist who once came to Wrocław to study art and decided to stay here. She settled in Wrocław, a city with a complicated cultural identity, which had changed its nationality over the centuries and witnessed population migrations, social, political and political changes. For many newcomers, arriving in the Recovered Territories after the war and settling in Wrocław meant stepping into someone else's shoes, into someone else's home, often full of furniture and memorabilia that the previous inhabitants of the city, in their haste to leave the conquered Festung Breslau, had not managed to take with them. After the war, propaganda was launched emphasising the Piast character of this land, re-establishing a sense of belonging to the place.
Over time, the existing architecture acquired new functions, such as the complex of the Garrison Bakery on Kępa Mieszczanska, built at the beginning of the 20th century, which now houses the Living Culture Bakery and the Geppart gallery. Even decades later, even to the next generation, to which the author belongs, it is difficult not to refer to the specific context of this polis, especially as today Wrocław has once again become a place of migration, this time for the Ukrainian population fleeing the war taking place just across our southern border.
Following these trails, the artist draws on various cultural texts in search of a universal message, for which Breslau motifs are an important point of reference.
Patrycja Sikora
photos: Michał Pietrzak; Marek Sienkiewicz