Is your mind full of good?

Is your mind full of good?, by Elżbieta Jabłońska, can be seen as a commentary to her numerous performances, photographs, and socially engaged activities. The question, coming from the teachings of Atīśa, a Tibetan Buddhism master, is a reference to the attitude of a human being and the ethics dictating one’s everyday choices. It is on these issues that the artist is mainly concentrated in her work. She analyses the roles played by women in the contemporary world, and her social projects focus on marginalized social groups, such as the unemployed or the homeless, thus revealing the internally conflicted character of the performer. The sphere of postulates clashes against what is actually possible, and the artist’s dilemma is seen in many areas – such as the difficult reconciliation of professional life with family life, or the feeling that art has little or no influence on social reality.

The question about the state of her mind is very personal in its universalism. When commenting on the Polish language version of her work (Czy twój umysł jest pełen dobroci?), in which she replicated her son’s handwriting, Jabłońska referred to maternity, which calls for patience and resignation from oneself for the other. In this context, Is your mind full of good? sounds like a pang of conscience, a reflection on one’s own egoism and the division between one’s self-realisation and sacrifice for the child. Referring to the words of Atīśa, the artist shows her inner quandaries, which stem from the challenges presented by contemporaneity.

Jabłońska gave her work the form of a neon light. For a long time, neon ads were the unwanted child of the communist times. They are now being given back their place in the history of design and urban esthetics. The role of the artist is unique here: she has made one of them a work of art. She had discovered an old neon sign saying Nowe Życie [New Life], which was displayed on the façade of an old electric power plant during an exhibition in Białystok titled The Journey to the East. The message of a “new life” was a reference not only to the new role of the neon sign as a work of art, but also to the new function of the building, namely that of presentation of new art, as the plant was given over by the city to Galeria Arsenał as a new exhibition space.

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