Agnieszka Błędowska

Tables Laid
object, drawing, 2020

Tableware and a Saucer

In a piece I am presenting at The Flight of Icarus exhibition, I intentionally refer back to earlier works produced with the same elements, ephemeral pieces, because existing only in the form of photographic documentation. In the pieces, I made use of broken ware, authentic 19^th-century fragments of plates discovered in the ruins of a burnt palace in south-eastern Poland.

I made an attempt at translating the complex phenomenon of migration, flight and forcible relocations, movement of people due to political, economic and historical turmoil into art objects. Shifting Tables, Invitation to the Table and Laying the Table are transpositions and metaphors of radical changes in the life of an individual in the context of outside circumstances, over which the person facing the turbulent and dramatic events has no influence.

And also metaphors of a sense of fragility and impermanence of owned object of everyday use.

The tableware or, actually, its remnants, the broken fragments will no longer serve anyone, unless... they are forced to organise their life under provisional condition 'from scratch'. I affirm the gesture of laying the table as an expression of the need to build a foundation of stability in everyday life.

The work in this form is dedicated to Zenek Polus. As much as our relations were not too straightforward, they have been inspiring enough for a durable wrapping of plate pieces to prevent any further process of their destruction...