Warm/Cold, 2022

The Warm /Cold  installation I carried out in the historic, Renaissance Potocki Palace on the Main Square in Krakow. The action consisted in arranging a colorful mosaic on in the gaps of the first floor balustrade surrounding the courtyard . The mosaic was created from second-hand clothes I brought to the white, cold palace – the quintessence of male architecture designed for the eye. The work pointed out the inequality in the representation of men and women in the history of architecture. Women were barely tolerated in interior design, but not expected to design actual buildings. Architecture was for men.

I stuck used clothes, donated by friends, in the gaps between the balusters in the courtyard. I instilled warmth into the cold architecture physically and visually. That which is lowly, close to the body and saturated with its scent and fluids became the material of woman’s work. A soft power offensive against the existing order. A weak resistance against its durability. The apparent decorativeness hid the potential for rebellion and attack. As it turned out, these colorful rags did indeed threaten the architecture. The balusters were made of sandstone, and if the clothes got soggy from excessive humidity or rain they could stain the balustrade. This soft and non-violent, visual intervention proved capable of ‘destroying’ something that had been the subject of endeavour to preserve intact for several centuries. 

During the Renaissance, the male body was considered the human body par excellence. It became the model to emulate and metaphor for the ideal cities and buildings of that era, for architecture that was pure and designed to delight the eye in spaces that were strictly controlled by the architect; in the planning of which the living bodies who could find refuge there had no say. Diana Agrest points out that male anthropomorphism was the guiding system of Western architecture, as far back as Vitruvius.   A controlled, clean space was considered masculine, and one that was polluted with bodies, uncontrolled, dusty and bearing traces of everyday life was considered feminine. Gülsüm Baydar wrote about this in Figures of wo/man in contemporary architectural discourse. Such a value system is consistent with the general attitude of patriarchal power towards the dark, the transgressive and the devilish. From the sixteenth century onwards, all forms of female disobedience and independence were strongly condemned, and the show trials of witches during the Renaissance were meant to discourage women from cultivating their freedom.