Rafal Zajko
“Often the works I make might be looking like they are inviting you to interact with them – sometimes I interact with them in the performances, and they become an extension of my own body.”
Interview by Charlie Mills
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Where did you study?
My name is Rafal Zajko and I’m a Polish artist based in London. I moved to UK when I was 19 to study. I did my foundation at CSM, my BA at Chelsea – and recently (2020) I graduated from my MA at Goldsmiths.
Central to your practice is the interplay between aesthetics of craft and modernism — in particular the legacies of ex-USSR architecture, as seen in Eastern Europe. There exists a propulsive element to this iconography, which whilst no longer representing the future per se, does evoke a clear sense of futurity. How do you balance this sense of direction and permanence with your passion for ephemeral and delicate craft techniques? For example your work in wax, ice or ceramics.
I was born in Poland at the brink of the collapse of the USSR. I was growing up in a country that was trying to wash the residues of communism whilst being flooded by western culture. I was raised by my grandparents who worked in the fabric factory in Bialystok (my hometown). The factory started collapsing at the beginning of the 90s which was a bit of an irony as the unions of workers (Solidarity movement) were crucial to the collapse of communism.
I was spending a lot of my childhood in the factory. I was obsessed with looking at the interplay between the workers and the different weaving machines. Human fingers, huge metal cogs, fragility and strength were all at play. It had a huge impact on the way I think about the sculpture – often the works I make might look like they are inviting you to interact with them – sometimes I interact with them in my performances, and they become an extension of my own body.
The integration of man and machine has long been evident in your work. However, for your 2020 MA degree show at Goldsmiths, you introduced a new and interesting element. Marrying the grammar of design technology with agriculture, you included grains of wheat, flour, and barley as metaphors for the reciprocal penetration of the human species with the various grains we farm, and the technologies we use to do so. What inspired the introduction of these organic elements to your work and how has this idea developed? For instance, in your subsequent solo show at Public Gallery in 2021.
The use of the wheat symbolism in my work was the residue of those post-USSR aesthetics that I was trying to exorcise out. With this new body of work, I thought I would like to shift the focus of my biography and heritage instead of focusing on the biography of the wheat and grains. The transition still included some of the older tropes – but I wanted the work to be less eastern European-centric and start to resonate globally. What was the better subject than global food production? I was questioning whether it wasn’t us who domesticated the wheat – but the grains themselves used humankind to give it the status they grasp. It’s quite impressive that Gluten is in 70% of the global food production whilst our bodies still can’t fully digest it.
Within this show, we see a number of references to breathing, ventilation and purification. Coupled with your isolated and entombed figure, Resuscitation was an eerily prescient exploration of many subjects that would come to define the past few years (the show opened just 1 week before the first UK COVID-19 lockdown). How has the pandemic affected the way you think about these ideas and has the pandemic found its way into the works you are making now?
The idea of breathing life into something is deeply rooted in my past, coming from a Catholic household in Poland. Bialystok (the city I grew up in) belongs to a particular region of Poland (Podlachia) that includes the largest remaining parts of an immense primeval forest that once stretched across the European plain. A connection to the local folklore, superstitions and mythological beliefs were deeply ingrained. The Pandemic has been tough for everyone - but I think it invigorated me, even more, to continue on my path and interests within my practice - however difficult they might be.
“Amber Chamber” 2020
Resuscitation – installation view with Rafał Zajko as a Chochoł. Castor Gallery. London 2020
Amber Chamber and Rafał Zajko as a Chochoł. Castor Gallery. London 2020
Lazarus (Detail). Castor Gallery. London 2020
Performance has a strong presence in your work. For your solo show at Castor Projects in 2020, Resuscitation, you were filmed interacting with your works, and in particular the supine cryogenic sculpture, Amber Chamber. The performance, in which you embody Chochoł — a mischievous spirit in Slavic folklore — has a number of elements, including singing, blowing vapes and the mechanical elements of the sculptures themselves. Can you tell us about the ideas behind this performance, and how this reflects your greater interest in the medium and its relevance to your work?
With ‘Resuscitation’, I was reflecting upon this point just before death when something is brought back to life. I was thinking about us as a human species trying to save the planet, protecting nature before it crumbles.
In ‘Amber Chamber’ I created a kind of sarcophagus for Chochol, a character from Polish folklore. My thinking was that this character would act as a kind of metaphor for resuscitation. He was a character in a novel called “The Wedding” (1901) by Wyspianski. The author created this character (who caused mischief) because people were disrespecting nature. Chochol's form comes from the shape of the haystacks that would protect smaller trees in the fields during the winter.
In the performance, I was singing a traditional funeral song from my region in North-East Poland. It is a very Catholic area, next to the last remaining bit of primeval forest in Europe. In this region, there are a lot of people who are spiritual healers, fortune tellers, and older ladies called whisperers. So, there's this weird mixture of Catholicism/Orthodoxy, that is strangely intertwined with paganism.
The song comes from a traditional way of voice emission called white singing mostly sung by older ladies in choirs at funerals. In the lyrics, a person says goodbye to the world, starting with their material belongings, then family and nature. I liked how the lyrics of that song could also be understood as saying goodbye to the earth, as a planet. I wanted it to be interpreted less about mourning and perhaps more about an expectation of something else. New beginnings.
The performance is was really deeply embedded in research I have been doing on Soviet communism, and Nicolai Fyordorov - his ideas about how he thought that humankind was only going to find happiness somewhere other than earth.
Amber Chamber, Bold Tendencies 2020
Amber Chamber II (Resurgence), New Contemporaries 2021
Amber Chamber II (Resurgence) (Detail)
Eartheater, Public Gallery 2021
You are currently participating in Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2021, in which you have shown a new iteration of the chamber, Amber Chamber II (Resurgence). On 16 February you will perform live alongside this work — could you tell us what to expect from that performance, and how the new chamber differs, and why, compared to the original work?
The new version of the “Amber Chamber” shows the Chochol character in the process of transformation. His head lost the sheaves of wheat – it glows and emits light as if it was in the molten state. The work came as the extension of my research into the biography of wheat – but the more I think about it – it became more me processing the catholic mythologies of the bread becoming a human flesh during communion. My research became one with my childhood memories in which I was trying to picture the act of transubstantiation. In the piece, we see wheatsheaf, transformed into grains that transformed into flour. We also see singular wheat grain sprouting from human flesh. It’s all about one thing becoming another – us becoming one with nature – transformation.
In the performance “Interludium II” at SLG Chochol will be multiplied. I’m joined by another fantastic polish artist – Agnieszka Szczotka. We are currently In the process of bringing this work back to life and I wouldn’t like to reveal too much about it just yet.
Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?
Currently working on a couple of solo shows. The first one “Song to the Sirens” will happen this April at Cooke and Latham Gallery. The exhibition will consist of a new body of work around the structure of the human throat, voice production, civil defence sirens and the drag. The second one is in December at Block 336. This work will come from research about how weaving, jacquard and fabric production had an impact on the production of the first generations of computers. The gallery is set in a purpose-built cooling chamber that housed large-scale, first-generation computers used by Coutts Bank in the 1970’s. The space contains the remnants of some of the original machinery as well as the ducts, vents, pipes, and the early digital systems that were used back then. I will also be going to be part of the London Open 2022 at Whitechapel Gallery this Summer.
All images are courtesy of the artist
Date of publication: 18/02/22
