Our memory of the past is shaped not only by historical narratives and dates, but also by our senses. Over the past decades, fields ranging from anthropology to memory studies have paid increasing attention to the ways in which remembering is connected to touch, smell, texture, and to how things creak, stick, or crumble. Today, the aesthetics and atmosphere of the 1990s, the era of political and economic transformation, have become firmly embedded in contemporary art, fashion, and popular culture. Narratives about this period often return to a sense of temporariness and superficiality: faux leather pretending to be genuine leather, and polystyrene hidden beneath layers of pastel-colored plaster. The discussion will take as its starting point works by Cezary Poniatowski from the collections of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź and PURO: forms that reflect the interiors, anxieties, and aspirations of a time of transition, where history swells and cracks. Together with Olga Drenda and Marta Madejska, researchers of everyday life and memory in post-transformation Poland, we will consider what images and imaginaries of the transformation era reveal about the ways we think about both history and the present. Paraphrasing the question posed by documenta 12, “Is modernity our antiquity?”, we ask: Are the 1990s becoming our new antiquity?

The discussion will be moderated by Jakub Gawkowski.

The event is organized in cooperation with the Museum of Art in Łódź.

Following the panel discussion, we invite guests to join a guided tour of the exhibition “Ways of Seeing. The Collection of the Museum of Art in Łódź” with curator Jakub Gawkowski and artist Cezary Poniatowski.

12:00 PM – Panel discussion: “Break My Art. Faux Leather and Polystyrene: On the Materiality of Transformation” at PURO Łódź Centrum

2:00 PM – Guided tour of the exhibition “Ways of Seeing. Collection of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź” with curator Jakub Gawkowskiand artist Cezary Poniatowski.