Broken Femur

About

When anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-1978) was asked by students what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a community, they expected her to talk about clay pots, simple hunting tools, or religious amulets. But no - Mead replied that the first evidence of civilization was the discovery of a 15,000-year-old broken human femur bone. In nature, if you break your leg, you die. You can't run from danger, you can't get to the source of water or hunt for food. No creature survives without compassion and help long enough for a broken femur to heal. Civilization begins at the moment when a second being helps the injured one and takes care of it, instead of abandoning it to save its own life or comfort.

We understand the theme of the exhibition as a call for a change in social dogmas, to finally grow out of learned prejudices and behavioral patterns. Let's unlearn dysfunctional, colonizing patterns based on power strategies and cultivate new, intuitive visions. We need collective solidarity, connected to our physical and emotional wisdom.

Reflection or critique of social issues that personally touch us or resonate throughout society is an underlying but omnipresent motif of the exhibited objects, images, and installations. For this purpose, we choose the path of polemics with formal patterns from the history of art, where the citation of artifacts or forms represents the cultural and social tradition of our civilization with all its pros and cons.

The installation of the exhibition is surrounded by a material environment that allows visitors to interactively intervene and change its shape. It is also a meditative corner that invites haptic experiences, a return to ancient methods and natural materials. It consists of almost alchemically contrasting substances of wax and sand, which create an atmosphere of subliminal tension and polarized qualities that need to be stirred.

Curator: Piotr Sikora