There Is No Place For Art Here

The painting by Laura Pawela, There Is No Place For Art Here, was created as part of a two-year project titled Reallaura, which resulted in a series of small images in the style of graphic messages which used to be displayed on the green screens of mobile phones. Composed of clearly distinct pixels, the concise communications made up of words and images – and regularly sent out by means of electronic devices – referred to the private life and emotions of the artist, the moments of joy, sadness, and frustration. The Reallaura project has been interpreted in categories of the criticism of contemporary means of communication, which simplified personal relations to the exchange of short messages. What was also indicated was the references the project made to reality shows and its ironic commentary on the artificial reality created in such programs, as well as the elements of social criticism present in some of the works.

The message “There is no place for art here”, placed next to the blurred face of the artist, is a bitter comment on the situation of art and artists in Poland. The work was created in times of strong protests against most contemporary art in the country, as well as the political campaigns waged against artists and exhibiting institutions, if only to mention the law suit against the artist Dorota Nieznalska, who was accused of offending religious feelings, or the instances of art works being censored by representatives of conservative parties (for example on the exhibition Pies w sztuce polskiej [The Dog in Polish Art] at Galeria Arsenał in Białystok, 2003) or destroyed (such as the damaging of Maurizio Cattelan’s sculpture La nona ora and the smashing up of Piotr Uklański show The Nazis at Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, both events took place in 2000). The very accusational slogan “there is no place for art here” is, on the one hand, a very apt diagnosis of the situation, but on the other, it provokes the ever current question about freedom of speech and the social function of art. Art, which once was a key component of building identity and the cultural capital of the state, has now become a necessary evil which should be protested against. As Pawela herself comments on her work, “The ease of deleting an element on the computer screen is equivalent here to the easiness with which inconvenient art can be erased from the field of vision.”

Izabela Kopania