Exhibition curator: dr Marta Czarnecka-Tokarz
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Something that at first glance seemed like an ordinary memento has now become acutely corporeal, familiar and as if alive. This is exactly what the artist feels when she touches it. Grandma’s braid, for it is described here, carries the weight of history and acts as a powerful emotional trigger. Not without significance is the fact that its texture and colour are deceptively reminiscent of her granddaughter’s hair. Angelika uses it in her performance, weaving it into a several-metre-long quilt making it, perhaps, the most important ingredient (because it is where it all began). “Embodied relic” is the polyphony of the women who agreed to donate their hair to the project; it is an emanation of their strength, in line with the symbolism that hair is our power, and losing or cutting it can be an act of stripping off identity, depriving us of vitality, self-confidence, dignity or femininity.
The braid, several metres long, is a tool for preserving memory, an expression of female community, a reference to tradition, a weave of different attitudes and fragments of life stories. After all, each segment of hair tells us something about one’s mental or physical condition at a given moment in life, hair grows with the accumulation of successive experiences, and getting rid of it is like an act of starting anew, a tabula rasa, a cleansing and annihilation of the record of one’s own past.
Hair retains the mysterious power and energy of its possessor, hence Angelika’s eponymous relic has the capacity to influence. Although it is composed of many, it resounds with a single voice, like a network of
interlocking roots of a single tree.
dr Marta Czarnecka-Tokarz
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Angelika Puff (b.1994) works in the mediums of painting, performance and site-specific. She graduated with honours from the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice in 2023. She participated in a residency and internship at DOOR Creative Studio in Amsterdam (2020-2021). She has presented works in solo exhibitions, such as ‘Krew korzeni’ at Jak Zapomnieć gallery in Krakow, Poland, and in group exhibitions, including “Best Diplomas” at the Great Armoury in Gdansk (2024). Her
performative work includes the performance “They are riding the copper wave and only wear fur inside” at Salon, Basel, Switzerland. She is the founder of ARENA Art Space, an organisation that carries out educational and social projects in art
performance art in Europe. Her work explores identity through place of origin, relationship with nature and
ritual, exploring symbolism, traditions and primordial forms of human experience.
The exhibition is site-specific and includes performative actions, engaging both the space and the audience in a process of redefining community and memory.
The exhibition will be on display until 29 June 2025.
MEDIA PATRONAGE
