Katarzyna Kozyra, A Dream of Linnaeus´ Daughter, video still, 2018.
The video art work was recorded in the Linnaean gardens during the international festival Revolve Performance Art Days and the annual Linnaean garden party together with the Uppsala audience in May 2018 and is acquired to the Uppsala Art Museum´s art collections. A Dream of Linnaeus´ Daughter premiered at the ŻAK | BRANICKA Gallery in 2018 and will now meet the Swedish audience. Premiere and artist talk with Katarzyna Kozyra and curator Rebecka Wigh Abrahamsson will be held on Thursday 25 April at Uppsala Art Museum.
Throughout her international career the video- and performance artist Katarzyna Kozyra has examined power structures and norms in relation to gender, animals or systems of belief. In the video art work A Dream of Linnaeus´ Daughter the artist revisits these earlier explored themes and in particular the graduation work, the sculpture Pyramid of Animals from 1993.
Katarzyna Kozyra acts as Elisabeth Christina von Linné, one of Linnaeus’ five daughters, an exceptionally talented figure forgotten by history, who as a woman could never take up studies, but still followed the steps of her father and became a botanist. In the gaze of Elisabeth Christina, the world is conceived in a dreamlike shimmer. The scientific writings of the father TheSystema Naturae, is viewed in a distorting mirror, in a new system where the hierarchical classification of the species is reconsidered. Elisabeth Christina illustrates this peaceful revolt by conducting a choir singing Ludwig van Beethoven’s famous Ode to Joy (the Anthem of the European Union) by different animal sounds. And arranging an “Ark” of EU-pallets. Harmony, dis-harmony and noise are suddenly ended by an allegorical deluge, hinting at the climate threat and death of species.
The video art work is acquired to the Uppsala Art Museum´s art collections and was recorded in the Linnaean gardens during the international festival Revolve Performance Art Days and the annual Linnaean garden party together with the Uppsala audience in May 2018. The park itself is organized to illustrate the taxonomical system of Linnaeus. Kozyra who often relates to the spectacular aesthetics of the baroque opera, also explores the social interaction as part of the performance and art-event. The recurrent use of the artists´ persona to create performative situations, with the audience as co-creator, was underlined in the former exhibition Identity Bending, at Uppsala Art Museum in 2018. Men´s Bathhouse, Olympia, Il Castrato or Looking for Jesus. The time gap from the graduation work in 1993 in a post-communist Poland until todays Europe where right wing and conservative ideas are openly expressed, the films EU-hymn may illustrate the shaky road of today’s Europe.
In collaboration with Uppsala Chamber Choir, Choir Master Francesco Aquista, Uppsala Linnaean Gardens, Uppsala Aesthetic Gymnasium and the Region County of Uppsala, the Cultural Department and the audience of Revolve Performance Art Days.