Klara Zofia Szafranska

My practice is centred around creating environments of meta and hyper-realities through staging spaces with sculptural objects and videos. It explores kitsch in contemporary communities in relation to human condition, especially the themes of primary metaphysical desires and fetishes. The theme of kitsch is understood as a social and existential construct ‘located on the cross-roads of art, politics, and byt [everyday life]’ (Byom, 1993).

I use socio-political imagery, symbols and allegories as well as elements of satire all evolving from social phenomena grounded in the acquiring of concepts and theories on Soviet, post-Soviet and Western realities. I contextualise my work within the socio-political and art theories by scholars like M. Epstein, V. Havel, V. Komar or R. Rorty among many others, who tackle the concept of kitsch as a social construct framing people’s reality in totalitarian regimes.

In my work, I identify and analyse contemporary rituals, post-folky social constructs and symbols that designate social spaces sometimes expressing different meanings in different cultural backgrounds. I explore the notions of social myths, and higher parties framing and imposing new realities or granting them ‘the status of absolute reality to its own ideological pronouncements’ (M. Epstein, 1995).