Stach Szumski
Born in 1992 in Gdańsk. Earned his Bachelor’s degree at the Faculty of Media Art of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, at Doctor Paweł Susid’s Painting Space Studio. Developing the Nomadic State, a non-territorial microstate project, since 2015. Visual artist with a multiplanar creative focus, ranging from conceptual and interactive activities with critical insights into the folklore-less aesthetics of the First World countries, to purely intuitive visual practices. Works with painting, digital graphics. Creates installations and site-specific projects. Presented his solo exhibition titled Forecast for post-thermal-upgrading times at Ujazdowski Castle CCA Project Room in 2017.
STACH SZUMSKI
KIERPCE* OF DEGENERATION
2019 / instalacja, wood
The project refers to the problem degradation of folk aesthetics, more specically from the Podhale region, in the context of popularisation of tourism and culture of souvenir industry. Its aim is to expose the demoralisation of visual traditions in relation to the “souvenir” capitalism, that is “production of local culture.” The forms of local culture generated with such an intention satisfy the needs of tourists, are tailored to how they imagine it. The commercialisation of Podhale’s folk art can be measured with the row of stalls along the Krupówki boulevard in Zakopane, offering not always “folk” handicraft. In my case, the interest in the aesthetics of Podhale’s folk art has a very personal back-ground since I spent most of my life in the Giant Mountains, where the post-privatisation expansion of commercial tourism brought such items into the stalls that were associated with Podhale in terms of aesthetics and identity. I focused on the aesthetics of pyrogra-phy (burning in wood), the primary element of the amputated handicraft. The installation demonstrates the symbolic paradoxes related to such contents that are most remote from the folk tradition, but still allude to the visual culture of Podhale residents, technically and formally.
