Death

Agata Michowska’s poetic installation titled DEATH (Wintertime), is a subtle and aesthetically ascetic poem about life and death. It is also an apt point of reference in deliberations about rites of passage where death has a symbolic meaning. Michowska refers to it directly here, by using a projection of the word DEATH, which we see in yellowish green, slightly blurred and upside down. The significance of the work and the context which it evokes accumulate in the plaster figures standing on their heads clad in yellowish green caps.

The piece contains a number of elements of the absurd, of irony and distance, but also a consent to what is to be. The situation arranged by the artist is, to an effect, a reverse of reality: for the viewer everything seems to be reversed. The figures are upside down, so is the sign projected on the wall. For the figures, however, everything is fine. The “reversal” with which the artist is playing is a cause of discomfort for the viewer who perceives the situation as inadequate. The plaster figures are presented in a temporary suspension. The state of reversal, of being upside down, will eventually pass. Everything will either return to its status quo or will tilt to the other side, which is unknown. The dreamlike mood hovering over the installation evokes existentialist thoughts. Avoiding literality, Michowska is able to speak about the condition of the human being, about the illusions and pitfalls of reality and, at the end of the day, about the mystery of death.

The border between the inconspicuous figures appropriating the space and the viewers has been blurred. Both the figures and the audience are subject to the symbolic projection which bifurcates the reality into two orders. In the reality of the viewer, “death” sounds more literal, while in the reversed order of the installation, it becomes a provocative metaphor which hides as many meanings as it uncovers.

Izabela Kopania