Iza Tarasewicz never danced the Mazurka while growing up on her family farm in the rural Polish village of Kaplany. Only a decade ago did she discover the prevalence of the sixteenth century folk dance that brought farm worker serfs together in a way that has influenced similar expressions of choreographed community across the world.
Tarasewicz has applied the spirit of the Mazurka to her first solo UK exhibition at Tramway in Glasgow, where the circular rhythms of the dance become a life force to her large-scale sculptural constructions crafted from agricultural machinery rendered redundant by industrialisation. Following research based on the decline in farm labour, agricultural problems and controls on produce distribution in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Tarasewicz gives what she calls ‘traumatised objects’ a new lease of life that mirrors a real life need for community in a turbulent world.
"The whole world is in a crazy state just now,” says Tarasewicz. “There are major political, social, and ecological and problems that are the same everywhere. But the biggest problem is how our communities have divorced people from being together. The main focus in the exhibition is on folk traditions within communities, which are disappearing everywhere. That’s the saddest part for me, and is related to how modern production of food and agriculture is manipulated by politicians, which we can see going on with what is happening in Ukraine.”
Tarasewicz’s experience stems in part from moving back to her village at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It's beautiful to come back to my village again to do this research,” she says, “but after industrialisation, agriculture looks totally different, so a big part of the exhibition will be about that crisis in our communities.”
This will manifest itself in a modular system of sculptures, including a large brass work pieced together with several thousand small parts.
“It looks a little bit like garden tools,” says Tarasewicz, “but actually it is little hands making circular movements on the wall, and is related specifically to the Mazurka. Of course, this is about dancing in a circle, but I also read about figures of Buddha with many hands, which have collective power that connects with cosmic forces. So for me, this work is a tribute to labour that is disappearing, and a need to connect.”
Tarasewicz is also planning a group of large-scale sculptures at the entrance of the gallery, “like farmers making barricades against the government, fighting for better food production.”
Accompanying the exhibition will be a series of performances overseen by Polish choreographer Pawel Sakowicz, who will work with Glasgow based dancers on a work based on the Mazurka. This celebrates the collective rhythm of life that drives Tarasewicz’s exhibition.
“I think it would be nice if people start to reflect on their own roots, because we are disconnected,” Tarasewicz says, “and I think something positive could happen if, after all this conflict and crisis, there was some new energy that brought power to the people.”
Iza Tarasewicz – The Rumble of a Tireless Land, Tramway, Glasgow, 8thOctober-29thJanuary 2023. Performances choreographed by Pawel Sakowicz will take place at Tramway at the exhibition preview on 7thOctober, and on the afternoons of 22nd October and 5th November. www.tramway.org
The List, October 2022
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