Karolina Mełnicka
Born in 1988 in Toruń. Graduate in Cultural Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (2010) and in Multimedia Studies at the Academy of Art in Szczecin (2016). Focuses on video, photography, object and performance art. Creates engaged art, inspired bythe Internet as a space of impartial, democratic space of social expression. Co-author of a project entitled No- madic State, which is an attempt to create a non-ter- ritorial state. Laureate of 3rd prize at (Non)Presence exhibition in Labirynt Gallery in Lublin 2017, 2nd prize at Young Wolves competition 2015, Bloom Award by Warsteiner / top 50 for video art 2014, honourable mention at FAMA Festival 2014.
KAROLINA MEŁNICKA
CLEANLINESS STANDARDS
2019 / installation, mixed-media
The work was created as a result of a reflection on the changing cleanliness standards – the human body hygiene and the surrounding reality. Cleanliness defines societies in terms of geography – distinguishes the “West” from “third world” countries, separates the world of corporations from natural spaces, and finally specifies the financial status. The rhetoric of advertisements that promote cleaning agents describes the cleaning process as something that determines the level of “control” over one’s fate. The aesthetics of “cleaning” – dead epidermis of one’s body, one’s home – by eliminating dangerous bacteria, stimulates the imagination, serving for creation of a satisfactory aura of internal self-fulfilment by cleaning surfaces. Cleaning spaces using various detergents - gels, powders, liquids – is, in my opinion, a determinant of a certain era in which we are living: which can be de ned by the needs created by capitalism and its aesthetics.
