Barbara Kupiec

I look for a universal visual code. I rely on shapes, colours and textures of human and non-human bodies. A buttery collybia—nipples scattered in the forest. A tinder fungus growing beside my block resembles creases on my belly. The centre of the felled tree trunk looks like the dry skin on my dad’s heel. The scar on my girlfriend’s neck suddenly becomes akin to a slit mushroom hat. I notice a visual interspecies affinity almost automatically. Slowly, I begin to dream of stepping out of the anthropocentric perspective and spin a vision of a world that has a different scale and colours and lives at a different pace and according to different rules.

The author of the degree piece focuses on an analysis of the works of Tatiana Czekalska and Leszek Golec from the turn of the 21st century. She examines the duo’s beginnings by describing the exhibition From Two Energies Strangely a Third, the performance Transformationincomplete, the sculpture Homo Anobium. Saint Francis 100% Sculpture and devices that the artists call “avatars”. She justifies the interspecies and ecological dimension of the duo’s works by Timothy Morton’s concept of ‘dark ecology’. The author seeks an answer to the question why, despite their innovation, Czekalska’s and Golec’s works were not recognised as part of the art canon of the period.