Artists: Ewa Axelrad, Maria Loboda, Agnieszka Polska, Katarzyna Przezwańska, Iza Tarasewicz
Through locally specific installations, five contemporary women artists have been focusing on the German/Polish border region by Bad Muskau, especially Muskauer Park, which is protected as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site.
Ewa Axelrad (b. 1984), Maria Loboda (b. 1979), Agnieszka Polska (b. 1986), Katarzyna Przezwańska (b. 1984) and Iza Tarasewicz (b. 1981) took up the invitation to engage with this historical location and the multifaceted history it has seen since the landscape park had its heyday in around 1850. In selecting and creating their works they are adding new, modern chapters to the story of this local ensemble. The ambiguous nature of the River Neisse – an apparently natural, yet cultivated stylistic part of the landscape’s composition and, since 1945, the German/Polish national border – makes it the connecting link between the different periods. The contexts and anecdotes that make up the Muskau cosmos play out before, beyond and on both sides of the river. Six installations and a video piece will be occupying the exhibition rooms in the New Palace and spreading out into the neighbouring Kavaliershaus and the historical park grounds. The works thus spark a lively dialogue between the interior and the exterior, between historical times and the present, and across national borders.
The question of how important borders are at a time when Europe is in the throes of transformation is touched upon on several levels. When visitors walk through Muskauer Park, they cross the border without even realising it. In the same way, the artists, all born in Poland, go about their work and follow their artistic approaches with no trace of any national categorisation.