Polish-born and Warsaw-based artist Liliana Zeic works with craft techniques, video, photography, objects, and text, creating intermedia and performative projects based on artistic research. Since 2020, she has increasingly turned to craft-based methods, primarily developing her own woodwork technique rooted in intarsia.
Her artistic practice is grounded in queer feminism and queer ecology, most recently focusing on queer histories through the lens of folk mythology. 𝘌𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘶𝘯 is part of a research-led curatorial project, developed in collaboration with Dr Aleksandra Gajowy (UCD), designed to introduce Central and Eastern European (CEE) lesbian artistic practices to an Irish audience.
In her work Zjadaczki Słońca (The Sun Eaters), Zeic’s ongoing preoccupations with the natural, the lesbian, and the historical/ mythical come together to mark the locality of the body. Nature here does not signify the biological – rather, it points to the connectedness of the body with the history of the soil where from it comes. Histories of land and soil have long been interconnected with those of gender, body, and sexuality, these connections marked as much in spiritual practices as in legislative regulations. The natural materials Zeic uses in her work – the wood, the hay, the nettle ropes – come to articulate a rootedness of the desiring, transhistorical lesbian gaze in its locality.
Speaking on bringing her work to Ireland, artist Liliana Ziec says: “I’m incredibly excited to be working with Project Arts Centre. It’s a collaboration I’ve immersed myself in over the past few months, and I can’t wait to see how my work resonates in this space and in this city. I’m also deeply curious about the institution itself and feel honoured to be part of its programme.”
The exhibition is kindly supported by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Poland, and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Dublin. Project Arts Centre is proudly supported by The Arts Council and Dublin City Council.
The exhibition continues until 18 July, and before it closes, The Project will be hosting one final closing event to celebrate it on Friday 17 July. This event will be curated by Fatoumata Gandega and will feature a dance performance by Project Artist Alessandra Azeviche.
Image Credit: Photography by Ste Murray
