Learning to live in society means to undergo a difficult
process of growing up. The moment of the eponymous awakening (of getting to know the mechanisms behind culture) is not easy, sometimes painful. One can respond to this situation in two ways: either succumb to the process of socializing, or – on the contrary – reject or question it. Artists usually attempt to combine the two approaches, thus manifesting a peculiar kind of protest. For on the one hand they try to undermine existing rules, they comment on the destructive power of homogenous society, pop culture, and consumerism. Yet, on the other hand, the try to create „parallel realities,” using for this purpose the very culture they criticize. Notions such as growing up, reaching adulthood or awaking social consciousness are themes commented on by works of artists we selected. All of them are aware of the processual nature of constructing identity and of the complex system of generating meanings in society. The eponymous awakening means, in this case, creating one’s own world on the basis of this awareness.
Artists presented here are not revolutionaries; they are rather uncompromising researchers or archeologists of everyday life. They are focused on themselves. Each of them in a different way: they are cynical commentators (Honza Zamojski), they attempt to combine oppositions (Tomasz Baran), they strive after objectivism (Sławek Pawszak), or question everything (Agata Biskup), their art is metapainterly (Maja Wilhelm), obsessive (Natalia Maciocha), depicting distortions resulting from the fear of culture (Marta Antoniak), seeking areas of conjunction of destructive emotions and rational reality (Barbara Strykowska), autobiographic, even perversely private (Joanna Pawlik).
Art is a field which offers possibilities for experiment and testing the “resilience” of culture. Young artists are aware of this fact, so they begin their way towards maturity exactly here, where more is permitted, where failure is not as dreadful as in the real life, where decisions and works – even the ones that disturb the stability of the existing order – do not involve the risk of exclusion. In their projects, the artists discussed above confront their idea of art with its meaning and its place in the world.