Two riversides of the Vistula – Eliza Proszczuk

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I have noticed a certain regularity. Looking back anthropologically, the river has always drawn a border. Not only a physical border, but also a mental limit.

So people imagined that there was another land on the other riverbank.

I still thought a few days ago that the world had shrinked so that rivers – at least the ones in Europe – could cease to be spheres difficult to get through, the borders. I felt that such a barrier had been pushed down somewhere far away into our subconsciousness, that such a barrier had ceased to exist.

But right now it seems that despite all our efforts, the water element does not let forget about it, the human being gives in to it easily.

My project consists in an experiment. “I am waiting for what is going to happen, for what the river will bring.”

I want to study if differences and similarities exist between two riverbanks of the Vistula in the Warsaw area. To study differences and similarities.

I will obey the course of events, I will go downstream...

I will invite Dutch artists for cooperation in the project’s realisation consisting in the filming of both Vistula’s banks.

Eliza Proszczuk was born in Białystok in 1980. She lives and works in Warsaw and Rotterdam. She graduated from the Department of Painting at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (2000 – 2006). In the years 2007 – 2009, she studied at the Post St. Joost Academy of Fine Arts in Den Bosch, Breda, at the Department of Visual Arts. On 29 June 2009 she was awarded an International Master in Fine Arts at that Academy. From October 2008 to April 2009, she stayed at the Arts Residency as a scholarship holder of the B.a.d. Foundation. At that time, she carried out an artistic project for Rotterdam. Nowadays, she is cooperating with Dutch artists in projects concerning the Charlois district in Rotterdam. During her studies at Post St. Joost, she carried out creativeness workshops for the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd year students of the Academy, entitled “When I was a child, I wanted to be...” She also participated in the programme of the Arts Residency at Hommes Gallery in Rotterdam.

She paints abstract works, she carries out installations and performance. Her works reflect her thoughts on relationships between people. She finds inspiration in organicity in a broader sense, in the notions such as the body, the space, the redness, the pace, the human cell. The matters of key importance for her art are “the social icon” and “the private icon”. She is interested in issues concerning the shaping of culture, in particular in the relationship between the artist and the audience in the twilight of Postmodernism. She participated in many exhibitions and festivals.