Stolica jest tam, gdzie stół / The Capital Is Where the Table Stands
installation, 2025
from the curatorial text by Tytus Szabelski-Różniak and Marcin Zalewski:
According to all available forecasts, in the coming decades Poland’s population will continue to decline. However, this general trend may be detached from local specificities and individual experiences. The artists invited for a two-week residency in the Ziemia Lubawska region had the opportunity to search for alternative ways of speaking about demographic change – ways that are more human and poetic. Their works do not rely on dry facts or raw data, but emerge from the memories of local residents and are brought to the surface through material metaphors.
Although the main theme of the exhibition concerns generational change – and thus people – in a paradoxical way, the starting point for both residency projects became inanimate objects, both natural and man-made. Unlike in previous editions of the festival, the dominant artistic form is not photography but spatial installation. Through these installations, the artists weave expansive narratives, incorporating locally sourced materials and objects to emphasize their rootedness in the surrounding reality.
In her work The Capital Is Where the Table Stands, Jagoda Dobecka performs a compelling reversal. She began with meetings and workshops with seniors, only to end with a fairytale-like story addressed to the youngest viewers. In this parable, the central element of the generational relay is the kitchen table – a piece of furniture that, over decades, silently witnesses the life of a single family. What would happen if it suddenly began to speak?
In the real world, we are left to listen to people – such as the seniors – whose visual expressions, evoking memories connected to their family tables, Jagoda gathered in an album that forms part of her work. The installation she created suggests a multiplicity of experiences bound up with ordinary objects that accompany us throughout life: from an old school desk to a contemporary coffee table by a well-known furniture brand. All of them were purchased second-hand from local residents, with their stories quietly sealed within the wooden surfaces.
And even if the fragility of modern furniture can be read as a metaphor for the interrupted continuity of generations, it is still bound together by the ribbon of a tablecloth – one on which Jagoda has inscribed the words of her magical tale.
Photos: Tytus Szabelski-Różniak
The work was created during the artistic residency “Sztafeta”, held as part of the Nowe Ciepło Festival in Nowe Miasto Lubawskie, organized by the Wybudowania Foundation.
installation, 2025
from the curatorial text by Tytus Szabelski-Różniak and Marcin Zalewski:
According to all available forecasts, in the coming decades Poland’s population will continue to decline. However, this general trend may be detached from local specificities and individual experiences. The artists invited for a two-week residency in the Ziemia Lubawska region had the opportunity to search for alternative ways of speaking about demographic change – ways that are more human and poetic. Their works do not rely on dry facts or raw data, but emerge from the memories of local residents and are brought to the surface through material metaphors.
Although the main theme of the exhibition concerns generational change – and thus people – in a paradoxical way, the starting point for both residency projects became inanimate objects, both natural and man-made. Unlike in previous editions of the festival, the dominant artistic form is not photography but spatial installation. Through these installations, the artists weave expansive narratives, incorporating locally sourced materials and objects to emphasize their rootedness in the surrounding reality.
In her work The Capital Is Where the Table Stands, Jagoda Dobecka performs a compelling reversal. She began with meetings and workshops with seniors, only to end with a fairytale-like story addressed to the youngest viewers. In this parable, the central element of the generational relay is the kitchen table – a piece of furniture that, over decades, silently witnesses the life of a single family. What would happen if it suddenly began to speak?
In the real world, we are left to listen to people – such as the seniors – whose visual expressions, evoking memories connected to their family tables, Jagoda gathered in an album that forms part of her work. The installation she created suggests a multiplicity of experiences bound up with ordinary objects that accompany us throughout life: from an old school desk to a contemporary coffee table by a well-known furniture brand. All of them were purchased second-hand from local residents, with their stories quietly sealed within the wooden surfaces.
And even if the fragility of modern furniture can be read as a metaphor for the interrupted continuity of generations, it is still bound together by the ribbon of a tablecloth – one on which Jagoda has inscribed the words of her magical tale.
Photos: Tytus Szabelski-Różniak
The work was created during the artistic residency “Sztafeta”, held as part of the Nowe Ciepło Festival in Nowe Miasto Lubawskie, organized by the Wybudowania Foundation.