Kinga Michalska
Diary
April 24 - June 2, 2023
Vernissage : April 27th, 2023, 5 pm to 7 pm
Kinga Michalska, Parents part of ongoing series Diary 2011-present, courtesy of the artist
Exhibition description
Diary is a photographic meditation on queer love, kinship and belonging. This ongoing series of portraits was inspired by the artist’s experience of immigration - leaving their country, Poland, and moving to Montreal in search of a queer community in 2011. This work has been exhibited in Montreal, London (UK), Warsaw, Kraków, and Poznań. In 2021, the series received an honourable mention at the TIFF Open competition at the Photography Biennale in Wrocław.
Commissioned essay
Excerpted from Hide & Go Seek
Poem by Jordan Brown
Monday. he didn't think of himself as an emotional person but
he let me slide a hook into his cheek.
His fine aquatic ass. My sexy Pisces king, &
he doesn't really cry.
But last night he bawled his eyes out
hiding beneath the sink.
We played hide & go seek
with a flashlight & a snorkel
both pretending to be shy &
in the dark, we swallowed our selves
into corners both moonstruck.
The rain started when we began whispering:
Ready or not, here I come, you can’t hide.
Bioluminescent, we swam
a deep black habitat.
I sensed him with my tentacles
across an ocean of dead fish lovers,
deep sea divers, & eyes
blinking at the sight
I don’t know how to tell him
it was me in his dream last night.
Sunday. He said it was his father, but I think it was me:
Small body, braids, fisheye glasses & buck teeth
rollerblading in the 7/11 parking lot. &
he said there were huge, trash bag looking things
laughing like birds up in the trees &
the sky was a deep, dark purple scream. I was like,
Damn. That’s a lot.
What do you think it means?
He didn’t really say anything
Ready or not, here I come, you can’t hide.
The rain started by whispering &
my flashlight eyes shone blue.
Thursday was a telephonic apparatus that
click-clacked on the line with a Baby, I miss you.
We were a million miles apart yet
I knew he was lying.
He was grateful for the distance &
I guess I was ok with it too. I had gone to a different school.
I was learning how to make wigs, hats, bags, belts & shoes.
Some-body once told me
Once you know how to accessorize,
you can always conjure up a disguise.
And he went to school for writing.
Ready or not, here I come, you can’t hide.
Monday I find him exiled,
seaweed-stuck in a submarine closet.
Vines wrap him in their coils as a baby would &
his shadow, once villainous, requested intimacy,
bereft of anything else.
The fragile outcome was hard candy, sucker sour tooth,
a sticky sentence spat on repeat:
You found me,
You found me, You found me! &
Tuesday was like this too.
Well it was me in the dream last night.
Saturday. At first it was him, but then he turned into me.
Small body, braids, fisheye glasses &
buck teeth. My sexy Pisces king.
& when his face turned into mine,
my eyes were the last to come through.
& I was crying, which was odd
because I don’t really cry.
& I knew he felt familiar,
but I couldn’t face the truth.
& I wondered how to tell him
& I still do
About the author:
Jordan Brown is an artist and performer based in Chicago, IL. He works with found objects, debris, and his own archives to investigate the boundary between memory and dream. His solo and collaborative works in textile, sculpture, video and performance have recently been exhibited at Theatre Lachapelle (Montreal, QC), OFFTA (Montreal, QC), Tangente (Montreal, QC), DAZIBAO (Montreal, QC), and the 10th Performance Art Biennale in Rouyn-Noranda, QC. As one-fourth of the Chicago-based Black performance art collective Suspended Culture, he has performed at No Nation Art Lab, Ohio University and the Mois Multi Interdisciplinary Arts Festival in Quebec City, QC. Jordan will complete an MFA in Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in May of 2023.
About the artist
Kinga Michalska is a queer Polish visual artist and filmmaker based in Tiohtiá:ke, Mooniyang, Montreal. Their work examines issues of identity, memory, displacement, and hauntings. Their practice looks at shared cultural spaces such as home, kinship, land, and memory through a queer feminist sensibility. They are interested in the periphery of who and what makes history: queer intimacies, amateur historians, geological processes, personal archives, oral history and speculative fictions. They create intimate, bold, visceral images with playful and sensual undertones. Their work is collaborative and rooted in informed consent with the participants. As questions of relations of power are at the core of their work, they are committed to questioning their own position within stories they tell and communities they represent in their work. They hold a BA in Cultural Studies from the University of Warsaw and an MFA in Photography from Concordia University. Their work has been presented in Canada, Poland, UK, Italy, Switzerland and Germany. Their projects have been supported by CAC, CALQ, Telefilm Canada, FRQSC and Catapult Film Fund. They are currently directing their first feature documentary, Nolandia.
Acknowledgements
The artist extends warm thank yous to their collaborators, the artist-run centers L'imprimerie and Sagamie for the production of the works, and would like to acknowledge the consulting work of Sarah Chouinard-Poirier and Brandon Brookbank.
The artist is also grateful for the text by Jordan Brown accompanying the exhibition, and for the support of Etta Sandry and the FOFA team during the installation.
