Home on Roots

Home on Roots pairs two artists in dialogue - painter Ana Vostruchovaitė and conceptual artist Łukasz Radziszewski - around where you come from and what ties you to it. Ana paints the landscapes of her Vilnius childhood and treats identity as something fluid, while Łukasz teaches visitors to carve boats from bark, a fading custom from his family village in Podlasie.

Zachęta on the exhibition:

Ana Vostruchovaitė and Łukasz Radziszewski have known each other and observed each other’s work for several years.

Ana grew up in the Pavilnys district of Vilnius, studied in Warsaw, and lives and works in both cities. Łukasz divides his time between his family village in Podlasie and Warsaw, where he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts. Their ‘places’ on the map are not far from each other. I was also intrigued by certain similarities between Ana’s painting and Łukasz’s conceptual work, such as drawing inspiration from local contexts, analyzing the sense of identity, and close relationships with nature. This led me to the idea of inviting them to create a dialogue exhibition for Zachęta Project Space. This is how the ‘Home on Roots’ project came about.

For both artists, this title speaks of a strong bond with the place they come from. For Ana, it is primarily a story about the complex sources of identity and humans as part of nature. Łukasz reflects on the future of his own village and family, building broader social relationships based on domestic rituals.

Ana Vostruchovaitė presents paintings, objects, and specially woven textiles for this occasion. Titles of works such as Sisterhood, Study of a Cat, View from My Window, Forest Spirit, Black Bread, Digging Season, Łuczynki, Flower in a Pot, Root System - well characterize their intimate atmosphere and almost archetypal themes. The paintings on canvas are kept in a refined, pastel color palette. The same applies to the colorful plaster reliefs and jacquard fabrics, as the artist readily experiments with taking images out of their frames. The home and the old, wild-green district of Vilnius where she grew up and where she has her second studio, besides the one in Warsaw, serve as a constant source of inspiration for her. The artist writes about the exhibition title: ‘Roots symbolize a sense of attachment and belonging, but not necessarily to something permanent. They spread widely; their structure is not strictly defined. Therefore, my definition of home, based on a constant variable, is what shapes my origin and way of life. It’s not about changing places, although it is about that too. Primarily, through the metaphor of winding roots, I express the free nature of building my own identity. I am part of the Vilnius national minority in Lithuania.’

The exhibition also features Vostruchovaitė’s more abstract works. Organic shapes most often appear in them. In other compositions, she analyzes the human body from a posthumanist perspective as an integral part of nature. A good example is the artist’s new painting, in which human figures hide their heads under a bird mask, symbolically crossing species boundaries. The artist states: ‘I take nature and multiculturalism, which are close to me, as my subject. The landscape typical of eastern territories, local vocabulary, customs. The post-human, presented in paintings and as objects, no longer has a dominant role in the world. It has a fluid identity, is affected by digitalization, and might seem to ‘flow’ into plants and back again. By exploring my family’s territories, I look at the details of life that bring our everyday closer, sometimes telling specific stories. Through my works, I ask myself what identity actually is. Perhaps it is our own creation.’

For some time, Łukasz Radziszewski has shifted his interest from creating artifacts to customs and traditions, as his private sense of belonging is tied to them. Since 2016, he has continued the ‘Zaczyn’ (Sourdough Starter) project - distributing over-a-century-old sourdough starter to participants of meetings/workshops and teaching them how to bake bread. He builds a community around this daily, domestic ritual. At the exhibition in MPZ (Zachęta Project Space), he implements a new activity of a similarly unifying nature: he teaches invited guests the disappearing skill of carving boats from bark. This custom was passed down in his family’s region (and probably elsewhere) from father to son/child. The boat was usually then released onto the water and sailed into the unknown. For Łukasz Radziszewski, this gesture is also about learning distance, coming to terms with loss. Bark is an exceptionally beautiful and malleable material. At Zachęta Project Space, the artist will present a composition of boats created during workshops in his family village of Karczmisko and at a festival in Gródek, Podlasie. The boats, hung in rows on the wall in various shades of brown, resemble lines of some ancient cuneiform script or runes. This composition is accompanied by film impressions documenting the process of carving boats and the formation of community during the aforementioned meetings. An integral part of Radziszewski’s presentation at the exhibition will be boat-making workshops, scheduled for the entire duration of the exhibition, led by himself and artist friends from various fields.

What to expect

Ana Vostruchovaitė shows paintings, objects, and textiles woven specially for the occasion. The canvases are kept in a refined, pastel palette, echoed in colorful plaster reliefs and jacquard fabrics - she likes to take images out beyond the frame. Titles such as Sisterhood, Study of a Cat, View from My Window, Forest Spirit, Black Bread, and Root System capture their intimate, almost archetypal mood. Her constant point of reference is home and the old, wild-green Vilnius district where she grew up and keeps a second studio, alongside her Warsaw one.

The show also includes her more abstract work, built from organic shapes, where she examines the human body from a posthumanist angle - as part of nature. In one new painting, human figures have their heads hidden under a bird mask, symbolically crossing species lines.

Łukasz Radziszewski has run the Zaczyn project for years, handing participants a sourdough starter more than a century old and teaching them to bake bread with it. For this exhibition at Zachęta Project Space, he brings a similarly community-building activity: teaching visitors the fading skill of carving boats from bark, a custom passed down in his family from father to child. Hung in rows on the wall, the brown-toned boats resemble lines of ancient cuneiform or runes; they were made during workshops in his family village of Karczmisko and at a festival in Gródek, Podlasie. Film footage of the carving process accompanies the installation. Boat-carving workshops led by Radziszewski and artist friends from various fields run throughout the exhibition.

Tickets, opening hours, and current details are on Zachęta’s website.

Museum profile: Zachęta.