She's Touching Her Forehead, She Can Feel It Burning, She Probably Has a Fever – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

Catastrophe does not arrive suddenly; it approaches slowly, gradually permeating the fabric of everyday life. Karolina Breguła dissects our behaviours under pressure and in the face of threat. In an age of cognitive warfare, amid overlapping and mutually reinforcing crises – climatic, political and humanitarian – the exhibition becomes a suggestive portrait of a society gripped by fear and division.

The central work in the exhibition is a five-voice narrative about a devastating storm sweeping across a sea-bound island. The protagonists observe it from a distant shore – initially with curiosity and amazement at the force of the thunder and lightning, and later with mounting unease in the face of nature’s destructive power. Confronted with danger, the community begins to reveal its fragility. People are disoriented; at times they seem to join forces in temporary alliances, only to turn away from one another, succumb to the influence of others or attempt to secure their individual needs. Cynicism emerges towards the misfortunes befalling neighbours on a nearby island. Growing fear exposes the mechanisms of social indifference, populism and conformism, which gradually undermine social trust and lead to isolation, intensifying the sense of threat. The community, of which the viewer involuntarily becomes a part, falls apart. The only thing that holds it together is the landscape.

As in the artist’s other films, the landscape here is not only a narrative frame, but also an active substance that retains the memory of numerous human and non-human beings. Traces of their histories are inscribed in the ruins of houses and in the objects abandoned during flight; their subjectivity is dissolved into atmospheric phenomena and elements of the natural world. As in The Storm, the landscape becomes a space for reflecting on socio-political instability.

The exhibition also introduces a Taiwanese motif, strongly present in the artist’s practice, as Breguła has produced most of her works over the past decade in Taiwan. A photograph from the Low Tide series depicts the town of Xincuo inundated by the sea. The gradual subsidence of the land, combined with rising sea levels, means that the local landscape is in a state of continuous transformation. Here, catastrophe is clearly extended over time, and the anticipation of its subsequent stages has become a calm, accepted part of the residents’ everyday life.

Karolina Breguła’s works are a sombre collective portrait of a society seized by fear and division. “I’m touching my forehead, I can feel it burning, I probably have a fever,” says one of the protagonists of The Storm, and her words sound like a diagnosis of the inflammatory state in which communities find themselves in the face of crises and permanent tension.

Karolina Breguła’s exhibition is part of a series of solo presentations at Gallery 1, adjacent to the Collection Study Magazine. This space combines the function of a collection storage facility with a curatorial and educational programme. The series presents artists whose works are held in the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art collection.

• We invite you to the exhibition opening on 19 June at 7:00 pm.

  • Leave your email address to receive electronic invitations to this and future events.