Mobile Portable Model

The issue of space holds the central place in Nakonechna’s oeuvre. She perceives it in sociological categories: as the area in which social interactions occur, and treats art as an instrument for their observation. At the same time she is distrustful of art; the question she poses is how the methods and tools used by artists may help us to better understand interpersonal relations. Her installations she calls “potential situations”, in which the act of playing a social role collides with the act of seeing and the structures of social relations may be revealed. Most of Nakonechna’s works are activated only in the moment when a viewer enters their sphere. Her comment on her Mobile Portable Model is: “Without people, this installation loses its meaning; it becomes no more than an assemblage of metal elements”.

The work is a metal structure in the shape of a tower topped with a revolving lamp and thus evoking associations with a lighthouse, but also with a guard tower. It is completed by a handwritten sentence on the gallery wall, saying, in Polish, “After we saw the lighthouse, the majority of us decided to swim ashore”. The inscription, lit by a moving circle of light, places the installation in the discourse of illegal immigration, as it automatically evokes the reports of a succession of boats with migrants reaching the shores of Europe, as well as the drastic photographs of the victims of these crossings with which the dire statistics are illustrated. While she avoids the literal approach, Nakonechna points to the economic, political and humanitarian aspects of the search for a new home.

Light is the key element of this work. It is light that constructs the “potentiality of an occurrence”. On the one hand, it is the light of trust and faith, which may lead to a safe shore; on the other, it is the terrifying light of searchlights tracking a fugitive, which heralds the end to all hopes for a better life. The recipients of Nakonechna’s installation find themselves in this ambiguous situation. The wall is a boundary which may perhaps be crossed, and the area in which the viewer moves – the region of the European reality – is a territory of stability and affluence, often perceived in the categories of a centre. Through her actions, Nakonechna attempts to push the recipients out of their safe comfort zone.

Izabela Kopania

translated from Polish by Klaudyna Michałowicz