Living space (Lebenscraum) Polish-born, Miami-based artist Justyna Kisielewicz confronts the history of colonialism and our collective search for freedom in ‘’living spaces’’, her most ambitious exhibition to date. According to the artist, her works ‘explores polish history within the context of multiple sites of global oppression including the colonial project in the Americas and our current climate crisis.’
Her kaleidoscopic, atemporal canvases encompass disparate historical periods, the lush native vegetation of Florida, a pantheon of animal (each one rich in sumbolism), and the omnipresence of two masked figures decked in luxury fashion. Kisielewicz explains that in the exhibition’s largest painting, Lebensraum, the two oversized figures take her back to her childhood when when she devoured books about discovery and travel like Julius Verne’s ‘Journey to the center of the earth’ or ‘Guillever’s travels.’ These books, all written by men, are about larger-than-life men entering a land populated by little people. Often framed as discovery narratives, these stories perpetuate the age-old colonial dynamic of a ‘civilized’ culture conquering naive or ‘primitive’ people. She describes the colonial project as ‘colonizers stepping onto ‘virgin’ lands where they found natives and turned them to noble savages win the process of civilizing.’
In her art Kisielewicz narrates her search for agency while challenging the dominant discourse about empire and colonial oppression. Her work forces the viewer to stop, look and think critically about our understanding of history, consuption and colonialism. She explores the narrative of ‘the other’ while interrogating the powers that control and write global history.
