Chłopiec marzący | Boy Dreaming

Working in sculpture, video installation, photography and performance, Zuzanna Janin's (1961- ) work explores the fascinating psychological identity of contemporary man. The sculpture Boy Dreaming is a wire construction in the form of a preternaturally large figure. He sits hunched over on a Plexiglas plinth, his head bent between his bent knees from which his arms hang helplessly, his hands intertwined between his feet. The entire openwork figure is covered in airport baggage tags collected by the artist during her travels around the world. The eponymous boy could be a portrait of a contemporary everyman, asking existential questions about the meaning of life. By basing his identity on mobility rather than a traditionally understood connection to a physical place, he is constantly on the move and has lost his own roots. In his changed life situation, he is forced to reconsider his point of reference from a different perspective, to confront the true nature of his own identity. Created almost a decade ago, the sculpture takes on additional meaning at a time marked by the Covid-19 virus pandemic and the lockdown, when the whole world was grounded and individual freedoms were severely restricted. For many, this was a time of radical re-evaluation of life. In her work, this resulted in the 2020 piece Waiting for a Journey, part of the Domestic Sculptures series, which Janin initially presented as a separate online blog, describing it as "a visual diary 'written' by moments of solitary living in isolation". Janin's work is rooted in her own biography, memory and time. She draws not from facts, history or literal narratives, but from emotional experiences, feelings, events in the spiritual realm. Identity, memory and transience are the foundations of her rich oeuvre. "She transforms sensation, experience, premonition into the blueprints of a concept. She interpolates without using words. She plays with points of view, changing worlds depending on where she places herself - the instrument of cognition, the most sensitive lens". (Olga Tokarczuk) Marlena Chybowska-Butler