PolskiThe inappropriate becomes necessary 2025
The inappropriate becomes necessary – the title of the work comes from Herta Muller’s book, Atemschaukel the full quote is: “The right things are always missing, you have to improvise. The inappropriate becomes necessary. The necessary is then the only right thing, just because it is in our possession” The entire book is filled with descriptions of objects or their absence and the persistent efforts of the main character to maintain his humanity, even with the help of what is inappropriate in normal life, outside the camp. In my work, I will very physically recall barbed wire, the function of which was and is based on violence and pain. Invented during the colonization of North America, for quick and easy fencing of large areas of land and keeping animals within its borders, it also found a ghastly application in relation to people. The presented 50 m of barbed wire was “softened” with wet felted (gray soap and water) sheep wool. During this activity, I covered and neutralized the hurting thorns, but at the same time I also cut my hands. In the frame, against a golden background, the clothes of forcibly displaced Palestinians living for generations in a camp in Beirut are displayed; a friendly Palestinian journalist helped to obtain them. The ordinariness of these clothes can bring us closer to their owners. We will not see them as a number of displaced or killed people, but as people just like us. Through this gesture, I wanted to give visibility and subjectivity to those and all people who live in oppression regardless of skin color, religion or ethnicity On a strip of white linen, I embroidered a quote from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice about the universal dignity of the human body. When copying it, I replaced the word Jew with XXX Does (XXX) not have eyes?Does (XXX) not have hands, faces, organs, senses, feelings, passions? – since he eats the same food, is wounded by the same weapons, is tormented by the same diseases, is cured by the same medicines, is chilled and warmed by the same cold and summer as the Christian? Prick us – will we not bleed? Tickle us – will we not giggle? Poison us – will we not die? And if you wrong us – will we not seek revenge?Since in everything else we are like you, then in this we are also like you. (The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare, op. cit., a. III, sc. 1, p. 207.)
Realized as part of a scholarship from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage
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