FTHo

Agata Madejska, Essentials, 2024. Leatherette, plywood, carpet underlay, steel, ring pulls, marbles, money, glitter, keys, whistles, toy cars, personal and found objects. Site-specific flooring installation, dimensions variable.

Grand Habitat Horror Vacui coincides with the launch of a new publication by Agata Madejska. Mistakes Were Made (Edition Taube, 2024) develops Agata Madejska’s ongoing interest into the fissures of institutional power by looking closer at the linguistic structures of contemporary politics. The collection of poems at the core of Mistakes Were Made are deconstructed speeches made by Western leaders between 2016 and 2022 — pronouncements which mark the beginning or the end of a political reign. Transformed into jittering, self-­affirming monologues, here, the political content of these public announcements has been removed. Debased of rhetorical action, Madejska’s editing exposes the patterns of persuasion that colour the play of contemporary political practice.

This publication not only brings together transcriptions of these ominous proclamations but positions them next to a range of abstract light-sensitive drawings. Operating in a manner similar to courtroom sketches, these drawings are instinctive gestures made by the artist as she pays witness to the narrative flows of political rhetoric. Loose and ephemeral, they record how the lulling voice of politics infiltrates the body, directing one’s movements through as well as one’s adaptations to life.

In an age of ever-increasing radicalisation and shifting narratives within mainstream discourse, Mistakes Were Made asks us to look beyond the facade of our political architecture and to become more cognisant of the grains that dictate our social being. 

Modified Limited Hangout, Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, 2018

Agata Madejska (b.1979, Warsaw, Poland), graduated from Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen in 2007 and the Royal College of Art, London in 2010. Through post-(and)photographic processes, sculptural interventions, and installation, Madejska delves into the multiple ways in which power can be manifest. With their liquidus feel, her works question the smooth façades of language, architecture, and public agreements – forms that hold associative or symbolic value. In turn, she poses deeply philosophical questions which demand viewers to think and re-think how we have come to know not only our world but ourselves in this world-space – how and why.

Selected exhibitions include: No Meat Without Bones, Belmacz, London (2022); I Dialogue, Kinch, Belmacz, London (2021); Mother Mercury, Art Night, London (2019); Modified Limited Hangout, Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven (2018); Technocomplex, Parrotta Contemporary Art, Stuttgart (2017); Place. Tlomackie 3/5, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw (2017); Entoptic Screening, Galeria ASP, Warsaw (2016); Johanna Jaeger & Agata Madejska, Kunstraum griffelkunst, Hamburg (2016); Kingly Things, Chandelier Projects, London (2015); Conflict, Time, Photography, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Albertinum Dresden (2015) and Tate Modern, London (2014); Form Norm Folly, Kunstverein Krefeld, Krefeld (2014); Twisted Entities, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen (2013); Man and his Objects, Museum Folkwang, Essen (2012); Made in Germany Zwei, kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2012); Menos tiempo que lugar, Palacio National de las Artes, Buenos Aires (2010); reGeneration 2, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (2010) and Aperture, New York (2011); Bloomberg New Contemporaries, ICA, London (2010); Menos tiempo que lugar, Centro de Arte Contemporaneo, Quito, Ecuador (2009); Agata Madejska, allerArt, Bludenz (2009); gute aussichten 2007/2008, Goethe Institut, Washington D.C., USA (2008); XIII European Photography Prize Riccardo Pezza, Triennale di Milano, Italy (2008); The poetry of the functional, SMWK, Dresden, Germany (2007); Kodak Nachwuchs Förderpreis, Haus der Wirtschaft, Stuttgart, Germany (2007); Agata Madejska, Projektraum Mikro, Düsseldorf, Germany (2006).

Madejska was awarded the renowned Contemporary German Photography award by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Foundation in 2008 and the Emerging Artist Award of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2011. She has also been the recipient of public funding awards in both the UK and Germany.

Housing T (Current Affairs), Organza, steel, aluminium, marbles, lice comb, tweezers, lighter, lipstick, whistles, key, ring pulls, hair pins, coins, pendant. 2024.

The End, Hand woven cotton yarn. 2023.

Photography: Peter Otto