Marta Razza and To My Friends... installation, Celeste Prize 2017, Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, London. 

1. When did you start your artistic career?
   It is difficult to define just one, single date. My first individual exhibition dates back to 1994 when, as the award for the most talented students, the art school organized a show of my works in the Youth Promotion Gallery. This exhibition was devoted to the memory of the underestimated artist Camille Claudel, an outstanding sculptor and a woman liberated from social norms who fought for her emancipation. A year later, I was awarded the second prize in the Polish National Photography Competition for artistic school students "Twórczość Młodych". The first nationwide success, that came just after graduation from the Academy of Fine Arts, was the screening of my film "Sacrum" (2000) at two independent cinema festivals in 2002: the Third National and the Second International Independent Film Festival "Film of Tomorrow" (Warsaw) and the National Festival Cinema Off (Opera Leśna, Sopot). The film was acclaimed by critics. Using the archival photographs of Gothic architecture, I focused on those elements that coincide with the female anatomy. In the film, the images of the architecture and the body overlap and interpenetrate, creating the effect of a metamorphosis of the female body into a temple. The first international success was the Audience Award at the Passion For Freedom Festival in London in 2014. The festival featured works by "brave" artists, those who stand up for freedom. The goal of the festival is to promote and protect human rights through art. In the award-winning work, I referred to tolerance and respect for human rights, and drew public attention to the degree of discrimination of "minorities" in European countries. The work is a reflection on human nature in the context of modern civilization talking about social isolation, the exclusion of every Other. The „Ghetto XXI” is also a warning against currently reviving nationalism and de facto Nazism; against feeding society with fear and hatred towards Others. In addition to the contemporary context, Ghetto XXI recalls the history of non-heteronormative victims of Nazism, which in Poland is still a taboo.
   
   
2. Do you create installation by theme or series? What technique do you prefer?
   
   It depends on the project. The Ghetto XXI, for example, develops over the years. Similarly, the installation "To My Friends ..." (2019) reached its next stage. But there are also themes contained in a single work, like „Emily Dickinson's Room” (2009). I do not have preferred techniques; rather the technique is adapted to the subject. The form shall serve the content, not vice versa. I like challenges, so I gladly develop my own techniques or experiment combining different media. It is fascinating when the final work surprises us, presents something never seen before, constitutes entirely the materialization of our imagination.
   
   
3. Tell me more about your shortlisted work of art at Celeste Art Prize 2017
   
   A multi-level, transparent spatial installation „To My Friends ...” is inspired by Władysław Strzemiński's collages under the title-dedication „To My Friends the Jews”, which he created from 1945. Collages constituted Strzemiński's response to the experience of war and post-war anti-Semitism, which the artist opposed in this way. Strzemiński traced motifs from some of his war drawings through transposing entire compositions or fragments of them. The second crucial element of the collages are photographs from the ghetto, transports, concentration camps and the Jewish uprising glued on drawings. Shocking photographs show massacred bodies, shanks and skulls of murdered people. The experience of war and the Holocaust is marked by a break in the artistic biography - in the war works none of the existing languages or forms, is able to reflect traumatic experience. The artist departs from the formal utopia of Unizism, of which he himself was the creator. Strzemiński's series „To My Friends the Jews” was shown at an individual exhibition in February 1947. In this way, the artist clearly demonstrated his own attitude towards growing anti-Semitic moods, social aversion towards the Jews who survived the Holocaust. The forms of the installation elements „To My Friends ...” directly refer to drawings appearing in collages taking their shapes. Recalling Strzemiński's historical gesture, I refer to modern times and question current forms of discrimination. The method of presentation invites interaction with transparent forms. Thus, the viewer can become a part of the installation and spontaneously share the experience. Each of us can be subject to discrimination since we are constantly exposed to being considered as the so-called "minority". It is the skill of empathy that makes us more human and capable of sharing experience of others. The form of presentation collates reality with the world of art, offering immersive experience, and crucially, stimulating reflection. The shapes borrowed from Strzemiński's collages are only meant to serve this purpose, and are not an end per se. In the next phase of the installation, on the same forms taken from Strzemiński's collages, specific contemporary figures appear - internet images of child-victims of wars. The quoted photos of war refugees are iconic and present in collective consciousness. The installation „To My Friends...” was created for the exhibition „Miłość na przedniej straży / L'amour à l'avant-garde” originated by me. It pointed at the need to change the awareness in 21st century, the need for a dialog attitude towards the world, living in harmony with yourself, other people and nature. The title love refers to the broad understanding of the concept - as a principle of respect and empathy for all living beings. Art should be an instrument in achieving the desired world harmony. Respect for the planet, for all creatures inhabiting it, without exception, regardless of gender, origin, worldview, sexual orientation and identity, and for our „smaller brothers”.
   
   
4. Is Polish Government funding contemporary art?
   
   The Polish government naturally subsidizes selected artists and curators. My works have been purchased for the collections of the Municipal Art Gallery in Łódź through funds donated by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. The installation „To My Friends...” was also financially supported by the Municipal Art Gallery in Łódź. Currently, unfortunately, mainly patriotic-religious productions are subsidized, in line with the rightwing worldview of the ruling party.
   
   
5. Who is your favorite Polish artist?
   
   There are many of them, but among contemporary Polish artists I estimate the most Krzysztof Wodiczko for originality, social commitment, huge layers of empathy and consistent pacifism. Wodiczko said a very important sentence: "criticism is not enough, art should also propose something." The artist should, therefore, seek solutions to problems and not just point at problems. For years, Wodiczko has been consistently dealing with the fate of the victims at the margins of society. The theme of presence of "foreign" immigrants in the society was addressed by his project Wandering Wanderer, referring to the Christian iconography of biblical shepherds. The latest works of Krzysztof Wodiczko carry an important anti-war message: If we do not acknowledge the existence of the present "culture of war" and do not oppose the ubiquitous glorification of history and the celebration of aggression, armed conflicts will continue to renew. "In order for peace to prevail, we must first face the" culture of war ", admit it and finally renounce it." A spectacular example of this attitude is the project of the World Institute of the Overthrowing of War - the proposal to enclose the Arc de Triomphe in Paris with an architectural construction-institution aimed to disarm the cultural myths created around wars.
   
   
6. Did you know that Loving Vincent the film production had to hire Polish painters because there were not enough British painters available to paint the traditional way? Can you paint?
   
   I have not heard about it, but I'm not surprised. Artistic education in Poland is on exceptional level. Already admission requirements for the Academy of Fine Arts, include advanced skills in drawing and academic painting. Curriculum at the Faculty of Visual Education, apart from drawing and painting, covers graphic design, etching, aquatint and "dry needle" technique. I liked the most to leave the studio to paint landscapes. I use these skills also in photography I use these skills using my own technique for developing photos with painting tools. 
   
   
7. How do you promote yourself?
   
   Promotion is not my strong point, but I try to take part in international art competitions. Because I manage to do it successfully, my works can be seen by connaisseurs of contemporary art in London, Venice and other European cities.
   
   
8. What is the upcoming project?
   
   There are several projects that are waiting for implementation: Rainbow (2015), Playground(2015), Beautiful(2016), Queer Dog(2015), which I dream of in a form of a spatial neon sculpture. I would also like to continue my engagement for visually impaired and blind on a wider scale. I am planning a series of works that will make the space of my home town more friendly for them. Generally, I am interested in preventing exclusion. In my works I also often refer to the tragic history because I do not want it to happen again. Among such projects is "Playground for children from the camp on Przemysłowa" from 2015, to be created in cooperation with the Center for Dialogue of Mark Edelman in Łódź. It is a pacifist installation project envisaged for urban space - an unusual monument commemorating children who died in camps or suffered in the war in any other way. 'Playground' would symbolically give children their due childhood. It would be an attempt to "disenchant" a dramatic history and pay tribute to those who died tragically during the German occupation in the concentration "Camp for Polish Children" set up by Germans on Przemyslowa Street in Lodz to „solve” the problem of Polish orphans after Nazis killed or arrested by their parents. This is a story little known even to the inhabitants of our city. The project requires, however, cooperation with government institutions, foundations and private patrons of art, to make implementation of the project possible.
   
    
9. What is your dream project that you haven't had yet time/budget/sponsor to put into it? 
   
   There are several such projects, as I have already mentioned, but my biggest dream is to direct a full-length film about the fates of "Children of the Zamosc region"[1]. During the World War II, as part of the action to create a "living space" by German occupants, over 33,000 Polish children were displaced from around Zamość. Children taken away from their parents were transported in cattle cars to death camps or to factories in the Reich. Some of the children were transported to the concentration camp for children in Łódź. Informations about the drama of Children of the Zamość region quickly circulated the whole country. Polish railwaymen passed on messages about transports of children to city dwellers, whose population took the risk of helping and even regaining children from hands of the Germans. A part of the children in whom German anthropologists stated the presence of appropriate racial features, was intended for germanization in German families and orphanages . Out of a dozen or so thousands destined for germanization, around 800 were recovered after the war. Over thirty thousand children were killed in death camps. Also close to my heart is the Rainbow - a mega-format painting project from 2015. Painted on the roofs of buildings, the rainbow - the eternal symbol of love, diversity and reconciliation - will be visible from above. Over the centuries Poland has been a multicultural and tolerant country. Xenophobic sentiments have so far been a marginal phenomenon in our society and I wish that despite the propaganda surrounding us, it still remains so.

¹ Children of the Zamość region - a term referring to children living in the Zamość region, which during the Second World War were subject to forced evictions in order to establish new settlements there for the ethnically German population from other European countries. According to estimates by historians, the Germans deported from the Zamość region over 40,000 children during Aktion Zamość, which lasted only a few months, from the end of November 1942 to March 1943.

Izabela Maciejewska was interviewed by Marta Razza (2017).