Zachęta Project Room

curator: Magda Kardasz
cooperation: Monika Kopczewska

Download Exhibition guide (pdf)

The title of the exhibition, A Spaceship As Big As Half the Village, comes from the words of Tomasz Zaskórski, the artist’s father, who told him about one of his apocalyptic dreams. This one featured a giant UFO, hovering over their hometown. The artist writes about the project:

Waiting for the apocalypse is something that has left a deep mark on my father’s thinking. And it’s not just fear; on the contrary. I feel that there is a kind of expectation there, for something that will happen and break everyday reality. Then we’ll really be able to fight for survival, to flee, instead of living in stagnation.

I would like to tell the story of my relationship with my father in an apocalyptic context, of waiting for something that will someday come. I’m interested in the anxiety my father and I were born with, which is most easily dealt with through black humour and imagining things that lurk in the forest near our home (an imaginary danger can draw attention away from real problems, and there were quite a few in our family — we lived with my father’s parents). All of this of course in the context of the fact that my family home is located in a small village, at its very end, and there is a wild meadow and a forest right behind it.

The exhibition presents both works by the artist’s father and their collaborative works — small objects, sculptures and drawings, as well as three films by Bartosz. The exhibition is accompanied by a mini-guide, in which the artist fills in certain themes. It takes the form of fantastic and bizarre storytelling, in which recollections and stories about their hometown are mixed with literary fiction.