10-23.11.2008

 

Curators: Kevin Hunt, Rita Slater, Agnieszka Kulazińska 

Over the Rainbow is the artist’s newest project. It is a coincidence that the title might be associated with the song sung by Judy Garland in the movie The Wizard of Oz. Why? The song brought to the artist the memory of every child’s dream to go to the other side of the rainbow.
The rainbow is a popular theme in various religions and mythologies. Typically it is used as a symbol of a pathway linking together the human world and the world of gods. In Irish mythology there is a legend about a dwarf who has hidden a pot full of golden coins at the end of the rainbow. People also believed that the rainbow is a gate to always better (?) other worlds. But only the lucky ones could go through the gate.
The Wizard of Oz may be read as a story about the search for values, about pursuing things which appear important and about how easy it is to get lost in your own dreams. When we try to walk to the other side of the rainbow we must be very careful not to fall down from it. The Judy Garland song tells about human dreams about a better world “where problems melt like lemon drops”.  
Agnieszka Chojnacka’s sound installation consists of a recording of “Over the Rainbow” from YouTube. It turned out that it was difficult to find the original version sung by Judy Garland, but instead there are plenty of more or less professional recordings. The sound installation located in the Garston city space, “under the bridge” has symbolically united two parts of the city district; it has created a temporary rainbow, a gate leading to something better (?). Has it changed anything in the lives of local people? Maybe it provoked nothing but a smile and thus it changed an ordinary day into something a bit better.
Agnieszka Chojnacka’s installation may also be interpreted as a question about the place of art and the artist in the public space. Can they have an impact on society? Is their ambition nothing but a utopia?

Agnieszka Chojnacka graduated from the Art Academy in Łódź. She showed her works during the Third Young Art Biennale Rybie Oko in Słupsk (2004), the Art Fair in Poznań (2005), the Second Łódź Biennale (2006), the Art Fair in Strasburg (2006), the Young Festival Przeciąg in Szczecin (2007), and the Fourth Youth Triennale in Orońsk (2008). In 2006 she received a scholarship in the UK (under the Accession Project), in Strasburg, and in 2008 in Israel. At present she lives and works in Gdańsk.
She creates videos, photographs, and sound installations. She is interested in space, the way of an artist in the space, and in what difference an artist can make in the space. Her interventions are discreet movements, tiny shifts of focus, a poke given to reality. Her works may be interpreted on a variety of levels; they may make you smile, give you a break from reality, but a sharper observer will find questions about human interrelations, dreams, and an artist’s role in society.