Tatiana Wolska
Leisure as Resistance
9 March – 2 June 2024
Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham, UK
9 March – 2 June 2024
Midlands Arts Centre presents Leisure as Resistance, Tatiana Wolska’s first UK solo institutional exhibition in the UK. Born in Zawiercie, Poland (1977) and based in Brussels, Wolska’s multidisciplinary practice is characterised by her utilisation of repurposed and recycled materials, with recent large scale installations including London’s, Sculpture in The City and Frieze Sculpture Park (2021).
Wolska, describes herself as a ‘junk collector’, breathing new life into discarded materials to transform once-polluting objects into captivating, poetic and biomorphic sculptures. Plastic bottles, rusty nails, salvaged timber, foam from old mattresses and abandoned furniture – often found on the street – are given a second purpose.
Leisure as Resistance features several new commissions including scrap wood sculptures, large-scale drawings, a monumental makeshift hut using scrap wood and a site-specific mural. It also showcases two of the artist’s signature recycled bottle sculptures, which respond to environmental concerns about plastic waste.
A programme of community-based events will coincide with the exhibition.
Leisure as Resistance is curated by Roma Piotrowska.
The exhibition is generously supported by the Henry Moore Foundation, The Roughley Trust, and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
With special thanks for the loans of artworks courtesy of l’étrangère, Irène Laub Gallery and the artist.
A review of the exhibition by Sue Hubbard
Tatiana Wolska’s artworks are characterized by organic growth and the proliferation of biomorphic forms. Her drawings and sculptures, intimately linked in a constant dialogue, bear witness to a research on the sinuosity of curves, the emergence of organic elements and the hybridization of objects. Plastic bottles, nails, recycled wood, furniture elements become foundations for growth and amplification. Through an economy of means and the simplicity of gesture, Wolska brings out the inherent poetic qualities of these recycled materials. Her installations are Promethean and spectacular works that stand out as monuments of archaic beauty.
Tatiana Wolska graduated from Villa Arson in Nice (FR). She won the “Grand Prix du Salon de Montrouge” in 2014 and was invited by the Pierre Bergé Foundation for a solo show at Palais de Tokyo in Paris (FR). Since then, her work has been regularly shown by international institutions, including Frac Corse in Corte (FR) and Frac PACA (FR) in 2016, Villa Empain in Brussels (BE) and Arsenal Gallery in Poznan (PL) in 2018, Frac Centre-Val de Loire in Orléans (FR) in 2019 and Villa Datris in Paris (FR) in 2020. Her work was recently shown in a retrospective exhibition at the castle of Chamarande in Essonne (FR), as well as Sculpture in the City and Frieze Sculpture, both in London (UK).
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