Tautological Cinema

The poetic work of Ewa Partum consisted in scattering single alphabet letters into a non-artistic space: be it the open air, sea, or an underpass. This gesture led to the deconstruction of a language whereupon grammatical, syntactic and semantic structures were used to determine certain patterns of an artistic statement. Her poems were shaped by coincidence, which made their language more open and process-orientated. The confrontation with the elements associated with femininity (water, wind) made it possible to face the patriarchal patterns rooted in the language.

Ewa Partum’s work entitled Change. My problem is a problem of a woman (1979) is the culmination and the turning point of a process which began with Change in 1974. The latter was an action in which the artist had half of her face aged using make-up and immortalized in a portrait posted in the streets of Warsaw. Up to that point, Partum had used make-up to glamorize herself, signing various words with her lips outlined in red and pressed against paper as she spoke 1. But in Change. My problem is a problem of a woman, Partum had wrinkles, varicose veins, and grey hair applied over half of her body while, reclining on a white podium, she recited passages from the critic Lucy Lippard and the artist VALIE EXPORT.

Self-Identification is a performance show which accompanied a series of photo montage films shown in the Small Gallery. Ewa Partum, therein, presents herself naked in public places in Warsaw. During the show she goes out from the exhibition space into the city, where nearby the Wedding Palace she met a bride. In this manner she confronted the institution of marriage determining one of the core elements of femininity seen as a paradigm of personality made up by patriarchal culture

Using a felt-tip pen, Partum draws geometric figures on a TV screen which displays a news broadcast filled with propaganda delivered by the country’s counter-revolutionary party leaders. The artist lays bare the propaganda message of the media and their ideologisation.

A film by Ewa Partum