White skies, white worlds
Everything they look at will take on the colour of a swan. Houses, gardens and animals will turn white. On their alabaster tables covered with milky-white tablecloths, white bread and white coffee sweetened with white sugar will reign supreme. In the evenings, they will don white hoods, sip white wine, and dispute whose white is the whitest.
Ania Grzymała
Ania Grzymała’s latest series of paintings focuses on communities founded on exclusion and the normalisation of dangerous views and beliefs. Scenes from the daily lives of hooded figures, rendered in pastel tones, evoke a family photo album. However, tension emerges once we recognise their distinctive attire, which conjures the ghosts of bygone eras and a long history of racially motivated violence. The depicted figures are members of the Ku Klux Klan, shown in moments of play, rest or leisure. Upon entering the exhibition, the viewer is immersed in the atmosphere of an idyllic outdoor family gathering, which is further reinforced by the exhibition design complete with a picnic platform and an inflatable castle.
Yet the scenes are permeated by a subtle sense of unease. Set against a clear sky and a green horizon, the colour white acquires the critical weight of imperial amnesia. The white hoods are like white gloves: they conceal responsibility and soften the memory of colonial conquest, slavery and exploitation. The white festival proves hospitable only to its own – to those bound by a shared delusion of superiority. Can we feel safe in such a space? Do we stand as insiders or outsiders? And, ultimately, do we acquiesce to racism and white supremacy?
Beneath the artist’s subversive strategy lies a persistent unease about the future of a divided society. The stark example from across the Atlantic – regarded as extremism since the 1960s – continues to operate in dispersed forms. In many respects, the Klan resembles European and Polish groups united by an internally generated hatred toward an external – often imagined – enemy. Katarzyna Surmiak-Domańska aptly describes the contemporary masking of dangerous ideologies within socially acceptable narratives, using the KKK as an example: “hatred can be spread just as effectively by promoting love – for the nation, race, tradition, Jesus Christ, and above all, for the family.[1]
White Skies, White Worlds seeks to sharpen our awareness of prejudices that increasingly pass unnoticed. They are subtly woven into everyday gestures, behaviours, even advertising slogans. If we ignore them, the white festival may come to seem a safe and welcoming place.
Paweł Wątroba
[1] K. Surmiak-Domańska, Ku Klux Klan. Tu mieszka miłość, Wołowiec, 2020, p. 104.
