Cursed moorland

Klaudia Figura, Małgorzata Mycek
with a guest appearance by Andrzej Kasten

Polish villages and small towns are brimming with haunted houses (complete with obligatory crosses that spontaneously turn upside down), neighbors casting evil glances and curses, and apparitions barked at by dogs during evening walks near cemeteries. This is by no means a passing trend tied to the ongoing “folk turn” but a well-documented phenomenon found in both scholarly texts and local press for at least several hundred years…
The works presented in the exhibition by Małgorzata Mycek and Klaudia Figura stem from direct observation of their immediate surrounding, reworking of experience and overheard stories, without getting entangled in enlighted rationalism. Both artists, in their own way, describe a reality that escapes the bourgeois vision of the world and countryside. It is a daily life where fieldwork coexists with queer vampires, and sand is drawn from fox burrows, because, as they say, the best sand can be found there. The croaking of frogs and barking of dogs interrupt the deafening silence, echoing off the dark wall of the forest. Everyone knows it’s better not to wander there after dusk. When you look out the window, you can see faint light in the distance, reflecting off the misty puddles of the cursed moorland. Tonight, the moon hung over it along with the faded skeleton of a Sosnowski’s hogweed, but I swear I saw the ghost of a cow there yesterday.
Text by Maciej Cholewa @pozdrowienia_z_malego_miasta