Jaśmina Wójcik
Be My Guest

Installation, Workshop / Commissioned work

Dates
15.9.–13.10.2019

Location
Puch bei Weiz

Production specifics
Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ’19
Supported by Gemeinde Puch bei Weiz, Lieb Bau Weiz GmbH & Co KG, and Adam Mickiewicz Institute

In her context-specific installation, Jaśmina Wójcik creates a tower of empty apple crates to pay tribute to the seasonal workers from Poland, Hungary, and Romania who come every year to the Austrian village of Puch bei Weiz to work on the famous Styrian Apfelstraße (Apple Road)—a picturesque region and the heart of the Styrian fruit industry. The installation visually references Vladimir Tatlin’s never-realized Monument to the Third International. The tower is enhanced by an abstract sound score composed during a workshop with locals and migrant workers. The workshop focuses on self-empowerment through the use of voice and body, in which personal interactions and gestures of hospitality take center stage. The artist thus highlights the invisible labor behind one of the region’s most successful agricultural products, creating an anti-monument and an alternative to the marketing kitsch that is produced with the apples.

Sound: Dominik Strycharski
Architecture advisor: Michał Kempinski

Retrospective
Retrospective
Retrospective