“At this time of the day even shadows have colours” installation

During the festival, the banks of the Bystrzyca river between two historic Marian Lutosławski bridges in Lublin serve as an outdoor art gallery enveloped in greenery. In these picturesque surroundings, visitors will find a series of spatial modern art installations. These have been created by artists using various materials and techniques: Inga Levi – graphic artist, mosaicist, painter and film artist, Alicja Bielawska –  graduate in art history at the University of Warsaw and in fine arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, Aleksandra Liput – visual artist working with ceramics, Marta Krześlak – who creates kinetic installations, site-specific situations and records collage video works, a duet of Małgorzata Pawlak (visual artist) and Mikołaj Kowalski (Doctor of Arts and Humanities from the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University), Tomasz Bielak – working in the extensive field of visual arts, Przemek Branas – visual and performance artist, and the Hipnosis Collective, i.e. Agata Borowa and Piotr Leszczyński.

The curators of the exhibition are Agnieszka Cieślak, Magdalena Linkowska and Aleksandra Skrabek, who work together as a collective.

Visitors to the festival can enjoy eight site-specific artistic installations/objects/interventions displayed at the riverbank. Materials such as steel, canvas, fabrics, clay and even marine algae or dog hair allowed for creating multifarious and surprising works.

– These works direct our senses and attention towards the surrounding space. They tell a story about the rain, water, sunlight, natural phenomena and processes that affect us and vice versa, those that we affect within interdependent systems, says Magdalena Linkowska, one of the exhibition’s curators.

Made of steel and airy, colourful fabrics, the installation by Alicja Bielawska evokes the architecture of garden pavilions. These small, lightweight structures provide a resting place close to nature. Bielawska’s pavilion designed for the area at Bystrzyca’s bank has a geometric shape, resembling an unspecified constellation when seen from above. “Light, semi-transparent fabrics, hung on a metal structure, float in the wind, while the sun shines through them, mixing their colours. You can sit or lie down on the grass and watch them move. The pavilion of colourful shadows attracts attention and offers a different perspective on the surroundings” – says the author about the installation specifically designed for the festival.

Following this description, we can say that the pavilion is a tribute to the present moment, a call for a pause when you can sharpen your senses and surrender to the surrounding nature. Unlike a traditional garden pavilion, the one at Bystrzyca does not provide shelter against the wind, sunlight or rain – it does not serve any particular function. The multicolour installation plays a different role – it represents pure potentiality, encompassing the idea of human-nature harmony, being also a starting point for unrestricted imagination.

Dekoma supported Alicja Bielawska’s installation by providing the Sari fabric in four colours: Fire 77, Camel 20, Topaz 81, Mauvewood 612, free of charge. Light, airy and transparent Sari aligned with the installation concept due to its wide colour palette.