There is something difficult about liberty. When clearly limited, it can mobilise all forms of fighting for it. Yet once achieved, it can make you feel lost. For what is liberty today, when we’re faced with multiple choices on the one hand, and paper democracy on the other? In a world where one can theoretically achieve EVERYTHING and become ANYONE? When world views are so strongly polarised, can LIBERTY be ensured only if one of them prevails? Is the ‘great ark’ from Boleslaw Chromry’s poster, a promise of a ‘better world’, also a promise of liberty?
Six graphic designers and illustrators channel the concept of My Liberty in their projects – the theme of the pilot edition of Art and the City Non-Festival organised by the ŁAŹNIA Centre for Contemporary Art in July in Gdańsk. Edgar Bąk, Katarzyna Bogucka, Bolesław Chromry, Patryk Herz, Ola Niepsuj and Dawid Ryski are the authors of posters that will appear on advertising media around Gdańsk in the coming days.
Giving the artists space from which ‘cup-a-soups’, slender ladies in underwear and Coca-Cola talk at passers-by every day, encouraging them to become a better person by reaching for a given product, is a commonly known practice. One of the first such projects in post-1989 Poland was the AMS Outdoor Gallery. Following this path, with the voice of artists, we are looking for a definition of ‘my liberty’, asking about its possibilities and limits. Is the sense of freedom a generational issue, as the illustrator Ola Niepsuj says, or does it perhaps depend on the system we are a part of, as referenced by Patryk Hardziej? For sure. But freedom can and should be shared, to what Katarzyna Bogucka and Dawid Ryski refer in their projects, arguing that the possibility to create not only gives one a sense of liberty, but can also call for it. This campaign is therefore a form of sharing creative potential. Potential consumers will turn into recipients, faced with the question of what constitutes their liberty and encouraged to contemplate the reflection of Zofia Leszczyńska, author of the motto that appears on Edgar Bąk’s poster: ‘if every person has the same rights, there’s not going to be any fewer of them.’
We're doing art in the city. Not another festival!
Authors of posters on their projects and liberty:
Edgar Bąk
‘I feel free in areas in which I operate,. But I also know that I'm privileged. I sometimes use my professional position to help those who find it harder to have their say. I believe that the possibility of legally regulating same-sex partnerships is an expression of personal freedom. I believe in a world in which equality will prevail through the sharing of liberty. The slogan on the poster, formulated by Zofia Leszczyńska, draws attention to the fact that our rights are divisive. We don’t lose anything by extending them.’
Katarzyna Bogucka
‘In my project I focused on the assumption that my liberty is your liberty. I imagine freedom as a certain social construct. We build it together and give it to each other. We want to have freedom and take it. I think it's even more important that we give it. Without cooperation, the structure collapses, freedom is impossible.’
Bolesław Chromry
‘Freedom always begins and ends with words. And you never know what the words become. The language of hate? Political correctness? A brand claim? Or a xeroxed letter of an anonymous person who has something to share with the world? Which words are more real? Those checked three times by the proofreader and team of brand managers or those lost in the stream of human consciousness?’
Patryk Hardziej
‘In my poster, I point out that we always operate within a larger system of standards. Freedom and lack of freedom are not symmetrical, they do not play out in the same dimension. In a small group, the limits of freedom are quite obvious and we have a direct influence on them; on the scale of a society, this influence is smaller, but if we compare our functioning to, for example, the laws of physics, then we do not perceive limitations as lack of freedom, but as a reality over which we have no influence. It's the scale of restrictions that counts.’
Ola Niepsuj
‘Since I was born in the second half of the 1980s, I find it difficult to imagine a different Poland. That's why, to me, My Liberty is all about the fleeting, underestimated and easy to miss moments when I slow down. When I allow myself to contemplate nature – the singing of a lark, experiencing the scent of earth after the rain, the dance of falling feathers, the first spring buds on trees.
The main theme of the poster is a bird whose shape resembles, or is even identical to, a hand in the Victoria gesture – it is in itself a symbol of peace and freedom, and when juxtaposed with the sign of Solidarity, it gains a local and historical resonance. The meeting of nature and humans creates a momentum. I think it is worth celebrating 30 years of freedom with a moment to stop and appreciate how much we have achieved and what else we can still fix.’
Dawid Ryski
‘For me, drawing is the purest form of liberty. My poster is a tribute to drawing and shows how much one can achieve with a pencil. I leave any deeper analysis to the recipient alone.’
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