Bartek
Arobal 
Kociemba



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VI LEVER PA POLSK
VLP GALLERY,
COPENHAGEN, 2020

“At lever på polsk (Living the Polish Way) is a Danish phrase referring to cohabitation without marriage, which artists Magda Buczek and Bartek ‘Arobal’ Kociemba interpret in their works as something non-normative, existing outside of current systems and comfort zones. In Denmark, religious dissenters and rural (Catholic) Polish immigrants lived ‘the Polish way’, as they couldn’t legalise their marriages in the Protestant country. This selection of works by Arobal and Buczek centre on the idea of their national identity, defined both as a heritage and burden. The exhibition is their exploration of Central Europe observed from a distance, an altar for the Polish experience, something simultaneously formative and traumatising. Their Polishness in Denmark is exercised in the contexts of shared liminal experiences such as migration, pregnancy and motherhood, queerness, disease, and economic precarity.

The exhibition opens in November, a month that begins with the Day of the Dead Celebrations followed by Polish Independence Day (11.11). This year, it also is a month that follows the biggest and most intense citizen unrest that Poland has witnessed since the fall of communism. The works of the artists examine and play with all these cultural, social and political contexts.” 

                                                                              by Alicja Peszkowska













VI LEVER PA POLSK
VLP GALLERY, 
COPENHAGEN, 2020

“At lever på polsk (Living the Polish Way) is a Danish phrase referring to cohabitation without marriage, which artists Magda Buczek and Bartek ‘Arobal’ Kociemba interpret in their works as something non-normative, existing outside of current systems and comfort zones. In Denmark, religious dissenters and rural (Catholic) Polish immigrants lived ‘the Polish way’, as they couldn’t legalise their marriages in the Protestant country. This selection of works by Arobal and Buczek centre on the idea of their national identity, defined both as a heritage and burden. The exhibition is their exploration of Central Europe observed from a distance, an altar for the Polish experience, something simultaneously formative and traumatising. Their Polishness in Denmark is exercised in the contexts of shared liminal experiences such as migration, pregnancy and motherhood, queerness, disease, and economic precarity.

The exhibition opens in November, a month that begins with the Day of the Dead Celebrations followed by Polish Independence Day (11.11). This year, it also is a month that follows the biggest and most intense citizen unrest that Poland has witnessed since the fall of communism. The works of the artists examine and play with all these cultural, social and political contexts.” 

                                                           by Alicja Peszkowska