– solo exhibition, Biała Gallery in Lublin, 2002

This text is really about space and about what it conceals, what lies dormant in the architectural memory of houses, in their walls. It is a space through which one has to move.

When I entered Biała Gallery in Lublin to see Bogna Burska’s latest installation, I had the impression that space itself had been displaced. An everyday apartment had been recreated inside the gallery; ordinary furniture from average, modest Polish homes had been placed in the white exhibition rooms. I walked in and immediately wanted to step back, as if by mistake, as if I had accidentally entered someone’s flat. Only after a moment did I understand that I was in a gallery, in Biała Gallery. This time, however, its whiteness had been stained – blood had been spilled. And blood signifies Bogna Burska’s spaces. Spectacular and at the same time repellent.

I stepped inside, and the displacement of space was completed by a displacement in time. I move through a hallway with a table and chairs, an armchair and a cabinet. This is the adults’ room. But what is most important is right next to it. The main gallery space has been turned into a child’s room, a little girl’s room, whose drawn portrait hangs on the wall above the bed. A bed from nightmares.

The displacement in time deepens. An entry into the sphere of childhood. I step back and enter this girlish exhibition room, where the works of art are children’s furniture and toys. And the ultimate destination, the centre of the exhibition – the bed. At the end of the room, at the far edges of memory, and at the same time in the very middle.

Now I am no longer in a gallery, nor in a home, nor in childhood, but inside a Stephen King novel. The bed is made, the bedding hastily thrown aside, and on the sheet I am bombarded with pools of blood. Blood on a child’s bed, a little girl’s bed. And beside it, everything is still normal – teddy bears, dolls, little pieces of furniture, a basket of toys, a shelf with books.

WHAT HAPPENED HERE?!

Each viewer finds the answer within themselves, in their own memories or fears. In their own disgust and weakness.

First clue: domestic violence.

Second clue: sexual violence.

Third clue: defloration.

Fourth clue: first menstruation.

Everything is possible!!!

Or perhaps just an ordinary, banal childhood injury?

The scene, however, is empty; only the props remain, the actors have disappeared. We will never know this story, although at the same time we know very well what happened. There is so much of it. We become the actors, filling this space with our own fantasies. Did the blood seep onto the sheet naturally, or did someone wound the girl? There is no murder weapon, however. The viewer becomes a detective, searching for traces, trying to reconstruct the drama. To break the silence. And so, once again, after the shock of the little bed, they look at the furniture and the objects, at their disturbing and silent normality.

excerpt from the text Architecture of Violence by Paweł Leszkowicz, Arteon, 2002