Each person has their own perspective. The exhibition „Diversequality. Collection by Tomasz Armada” is a great pretext to look at ourselves. You will encounter 13 folk “types” – avatars. Can you see yourself among them?
The exhibition „Diversequality. Collection by Tomasz Armada” is a result of research over the Things of Cult project. By „cult” we understand the cult-like power of influence of various phenomena, expressing itself in mass occurrences or manifesting itself in influential opinion-making bubbles. Poles, are a phenomenon all on our own. Polish specificity has become an object of interest for us as part of the well known nineteenth century ethnographic idea of documenting folk types.
At the exhibition we encounter 13 types, figures resembling those found in old ethnography manuals, which should be seen not as real persons, but rather as avatars and simulations. Brought to life by the exhibition creators, they were created by media discourses, glued together by images produced in tabloids, intelligentsia weekly’s, liberal dailies and populist gutter press.
What emerged is a sui generis typology, which refers to Polish literary traditions, where various human types were presented satirically. The key resemblance to the tradition is clear typisation or even caricature. One of the inspirations is the series of Polish dances by Zofia Stryjeńska, the interwar period artst, who restored the traditional Zakopane folk style and created their avantgarde-popular stylisation.
This portrait, suspended in the present, speaks about the future in a non-direct way by speaking to its past. Our identities are facades hiding knots of relationships between ideas, people and things. With what is sophisticated and popular, cultish or ordinary, of importance and of no importance at all. We think we can control our facades, our self images. A skillful eye will quickly discern scratches, leaks and blemishes.
Deep reflection over the typical, the familiar and the iconic gives us tools to get to know and understand ourselves. The mission of creating a collection of contemporary Polish folk types were given to the artist Tomasz Armada. It will become a part of the permanent museum collection as a specific way we see one another in 2020.
By the exhibition, we want to renew the question, who are contemporary Poles? We undertake the subject of extremely dynamic social change, which took place within the last 30 years, whose pace has only intensified in recent years. The main theme is the existence of multiple conflicts within Polish society. Millenials vs Boomers, Intelligentsia vs Beneficiaries of 500+ benefits. We attempt to both write a new description of such conflicts as well as allocate them within proper media and social conflict. The inspiration for us was also the existing tension between high and low, urban and rural/folk cultures, the way they transform and how certain motives are being resurrected.
