Post-communist Bodies

The Calvert 22 located in Shoreditch is dedicated to the presentation of contemporary art from Russia, CIS countries and Eastern Europe. The current show features three Polish artists, who according to the gallery guide have grown up in and were subsequently shaped by post-communist Poland. All three work mainly with video as a medium. A common thread of the work that got my attention was an intense investigation into the aesthetics of nostalgia and depicting the body as a sexual and political object.

The videos by Agnieszka Polska portrait a slow and hypnotic movement. Similar to Andy Warhol’s Kiss she mesmerises the viewer through focused and slow frames. By manipulating static pictures into slow pulsed movies of what would be painful physical distortions she destabilizes the relationship of the body to it’s surrounding space.