In The Time of Cruel Miracles Is Not Over the National Museum in Krakow introduces the works of Zuzanna Janin, one of Poland’s most important artists after 1989. With her original productions Janin contravenes the well-established pattern of considering Polish art of the 1990s only in the context of the so-called critical art and pop banalism. Since the early years of that decade Janin has been contemplating the relation between the individual and society, which produces mechanisms intended to restrict individual freedom. As an artist, Janin has taken a critical look at the homogeneous vision of culture. Seeking to divert that perspective, she has been emphasizing the potential of imagination, just as French situationists advocated vesting it with absolute power. Her pursuits in that area do not come down to purely aesthetic concerns. Janin has been sensitive to social and political reality. She is critical of the models of unrestricted life offered by culture.

The title of the exhibition alludes to the last sentence from Solaris, the famous novel by Stanisław Lem; it conveys the artist’s suggestion that our imagination can actually shape reality. Janin tells us that by analysing the language we use and studying the media through which we communicate we can learn about the mechanisms that limit our imagination. Being aware of the principles behind these mechanisms we can use imagination in an unrestrained manner, develop our identity independently, and have a tangible effect on our environment. The artist makes us realise that the world and the roles we play in it are not determined once and for all; they are consequences of a certain arrangement and a specific point of view, both of which are alterable.

Zuzanna Janin (born 1964, Warsaw; lives in Warsaw) is a sculptor and installation, video installation, photography and performance artist. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts (ASP) in Warsaw (1980–1986) and held a scholarship in new media at ECAV – Ecole Cantonale d'Art du Valais in Sierre, Switzerland (2004). She currently works on her doctoral thesis at the Faculty of Media Art at Warsaw’s ASP. She exhibited at the Istanbul Biennial (1992), the Sydney Biennial (1993), Sonsbeek’93 (1993), the Liverpool Biennial (1998), FOKUS Łódź Biennale (2010), and in the presentation of Romania at the 54th Venice Biennale of Art (2011). Cooperates with lokal_30 Gallery in Warsaw.

Curator: Dominik Kuryłek