In the Footsteps of Ella Littwitz. If Everything That Exists Has a Place

I have never visited any places explored by Ella Littwitz with attentiveness and immense sensitivity in order to weave a multi-layered narrative. I have never been submerged by the muddy waters of the Jordan River, neither have I touched cracked earth of Qasr al-Yahud, nor felt the dust in the abandoned monasteries rise beneath my feet. I have never been frightened by the sudden appearance of a landmine right next to me, and I have never approached the border line drifting on the surface of the water. But still, despite an absence of a physical journey, I am under the impression that I have experienced these places, its intensity traversing time and space. While seeking an explanation for such an experience, I stumbled upon the words of Pierre Bayard who said:

A physical journey certainly allows us to see the place we are visiting in the optical sense, but it doesn’t allow us to see it in depth, in relation to the immense atopic space of which it is just one tiny element, or with regard to the eternity it is a part of..

Qasr al-Yahud as the place of artistic of research 

Works featured on the exhibit If Everything That Exists Has a Place at SIC! BWA Gallery in Wrocław are the result of the artist’s research conducted mainly during her trips to Qasr al-Yahud. In the Christian tradition, this is the place where Jesus was baptized, whereas the Old Testament states that the Israelites entered the Promised Land there after forty years of wandering in the desert. Qasr al-Yahud is located in the Jordan Rift Valley, which has been under the Israeli occupation since 1967. This region is composed of overlapping layers which belong to different orders: minefields, military zones, and places of worship for pilgrims of various religions, and all this is occasionally under the power of plants and animals, wherever humans don’t have access. On the one hand, real landscape was conquered by mythology and ideology, reduced to certain functions. On the other hand, the landscape – an actual space with physical attributes – makes itself known though a landslide, suddenly overflowing waters or occasional changes of the riverbed. These intense geological processes remind us of the two tectonic plates that meet there, beneath the surface. They form the Great Rift Valley, which is in constant state of motion; thus a territory that is controlled in political terms, becomes entirely uncontrollable and unpredictable. Artist’s works refer to the Biblical dictums, as well as political issues of Qasr al-Yahud constantly intertwined with history, geology and mythology. The exhibit features specific kinds of materials and objects found in the explored places, including mud from the Jordan River, soaps from Nablus or rocks, bronze and rust. Removing those objects from their places of origin created a sort of chasm. For this reason, the objects are in fact extraneous to human relations.

The Universal Message of Littwitz and the Mechanism of Political Borders

The notion of a border stands at the centre of Littwitz’s artistic practice. First and foremost, she is interested in the places where a border manifests itself in a material, and thus perceptible, form, as well as the events in history, in which its presence was strongly pronounced. A year ago, when we started working on the exhibit, I perceived this subject to be quite absence in the context of a country belonging to the European Union, in which borders are simply not an issue. One almost never notices borders. It’s as if they were non-existent. I used to think that, though important, the problems of migrations, territorial protection, and related violence are not as palpable in our part of the world as they are in the Middle East, for instance. Today, as I am writing these words, there is an on-going humanitarian crisis on the border between Poland and Belarus. Hundreds of people are stuck in a dire situation for several months now, surrounded by a dark forest and barbed wire fence, experiencing violence from both sides. Some of them are dying from starvation, hypothermia, and exhaustion. Now, my understanding of Littwitz’s exhibit has shifted as I view her works with a sense of shame, hopelessness, and fear, wondering if we can still turn back from this poorly marked path and why did we choose to follow it in the first place.

Written by Agata Ciastoń

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If Everything That Exists Has a Place

galeria SiC! BWA Wrocław in Poland 

curated by Agata Ciastoń 

on view until January 15, 2022

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