He loves me tough luck! SENSUAL ART WORKSHOP without barriers

Masculinity, femininity, strength, power, sex appeal – how to understand these terms, what associations do they trigger, how to express them in art? Sight, hearing, touch, smell – contemporary art can operate on all these planes, but if one of the senses is malfunctioning, how can it be substituted?    The Culture Without Barriers Foundation and Wrocław Contemporary Museum would like to invite everybody to a sensual art workshop. It will be held at Wrocław Contemporary Museum in Plac Strzegomski 2 on 5 June, from 5 PM to around 6.30 PM. The meeting will be made fully accessible to sensorially disabled people (blind and deaf), but it is open to all those willing to participate.    During the 90-minute workshop, a group of MWW educators will examine Basia Bańda’s watercolour painting under the intriguing title “Kocha co robić mój mój” [“He loves me tough luck mine mine”] (2007). We are going to present this small painting by means of as many senses as possible. We are therefore going to talk about it, listen to its audio description and touch a specially prepared model (tactile graphics). There will also be olfactory, aural and gustatory sensations to accompany the presentation. We will discover the numerous paths of interpretation and prove that each of us is capable of artistic action.    We will take part in a quasi-artistic exercise prepared by the artist Patrycja Mastej, who will bring materials from her wardrobe full of art. We will look for bodily tensions, maybe even erotic ones, by giving shape to forms made from cut-up plush toys (both the material and the subject are frequently present in Bańda’s art). We will put our hands into trance in search of the right shapes for our emotions – by embedding hard, rough, smooth or lumpy materials into the contrasting newly created soft forms, individual bodyscapes will emerge (the elements will be Velcro fastened).    Programme and production: Magdalena Skowrońska, Patrycja Mastej, Bartek Lis.    The sensual art workshop will be held as part of the project “Warsztat na Zachętę II”, co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.      

il.: Basia Bańda