After a sleepless night of installing, the show opened at 11 a.m. on September 26. Warsaw Gallery Weekend glittered with crowds.
Afterwards we stayed in a rented flat in the Old Town and went to a party at Valentiy’s Fig 8/13, and friendly embraces with Nikita Kadan Fig 10.
What followed: drawn-out adjustments, guided tours, translations, the newspaper, photo documentation. Evenings were spent at Amatorska with noise.
On October 1, Sarmen Fig 7 hit me with the news: I was expected to pay half the exhibition costs. He hadn’t mentioned it before. I said I’d think about it.
Update (late November 2024):
In the end, I had to part with some works to cover the debt. Installation continues even after the exhibition has opened. Only now it is no longer in the halls but in the body, in the reassembling of boundaries, nerves, and trust.
Curatorial text:
In Sergey Shabohin’s artistic practices, a revision of institutional forms of visual violence is surprisingly intertwined with a critique of mechanisms repressing queer sexuality. In both cases, a key role is played by a strategy of resistance against idolatry, whether it concerns historical memory or attempts to suppress free expression, including minority sexual orientations. The symbol of both is the "monumental" single-channel narrative that pushes all forms of dissent against political and moral domination, manifested through bio-power, to the margins of social life.
The "slit" is a visual and activist metaphor for a breach in this narrative, challenging the appropriation of historical memory and reclaiming space for freedom and queer sexuality. The vagina and anus are the two mandorlas of this revolt, referencing the symbolism of the darkroom and serving as emblems of Shabohin’s personal and radical artistic stance.
The total installation takes the form of a labyrinth consisting of eight modules, transitioning from black through various shades of gray to white, where different strategies of queering monuments and history are displayed. In this modular composition, the artist diversely highlights the motif of intercepting and reconstructing meanings implanted in public space by the usurping political instance. The simplicity of the minimalist structure contrasts with the richness of the visual information contained within. The strategy of counter-monumental queer exposes the mechanism of the "condomization" of historical memory, which shields and blocks a direct relationship with its sources. Forbidden memory closely neighbors forbidden desire for sexual self-affirmation.
Based on film recordings, images, and objects, this retrospective narrative is stretched along a topographical axis of three locations: Berlin, Poland, and Belarus. The thread connecting these places is the dialectic of losing a home, the attempt to find a safe refuge and sense of belonging, and a nomadism whose inevitable and culminating motif may, though not necessarily, be the experience of homelessness.
Andrzej Wajs
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Solo exhibition by Sergey Shabohin: Slit. Counter-Monumental Queer at Biuro Wystaw, Warsaw. Curated by Andrzej Weiss and Sarmen Beglarian. September 24 – November 22, 2024
shabohin.org/SLIT
2024 Warsaw Art Queer
Fig 1: View of the labyrinth installation at the exhibition Slit. Counter-Monumental Queer at Biuro Wystaw
Fig 2: One of the eight slits in the installation
Fig 3: Sergey Shabohin, object Seams: Freedom for All!, from the cycle Atlas of Tectonic Landscapes, 2016
Fig 4: Four of my works from the series We are Stern Consumers of Cultural Revolutions: Patches (Social Marble) and the neon We are Stern Consumers of Cultural Revolutions — are part of the ING Bank Сollection and displayed in their public space in Warsaw
Fig 5–6: Visitors at the exhibition
Fig 7: Sergey Shabohin, installation in front of Biuro Wystaw, Social Marble: 14 Steps, 2024
Fig 8: Sarmen putting up my poster at the entrance to Biuro Wystaw
Fig 9: Lena Shtyk-Bozhko, Andrey Anro, and Alexander Adamov demonstrating the mandorla gesture at the afterparty following the opening of Slit
Fig 10: Shadow of the Copernicus monument
Fig 11: Nikita Kadan at a party in Ujazdowski Castle
Fig 12–13: Cruising club Instytut
Fig 14: Radek’s hand on Vova’s chest
© All photos by Sergey Shabohin, 2024
18 сентября – 2 октября 2024 / Варшава
Щель
Начался монтаж программной для меня персональной выставки 1. Миша Мишук собирал и красил лабиринт. Я – тексты, сайт, фильмы, всё остальное. Процесс быстро превратился в день сурка: занозы, техника, телевизоры, сопротивление материала. Под водой похоть от усталости. 21-го – Instytut и человек с ярлычком на шее.
После бессонной ночи монтажа, 26 сентября в 11 утра состояось открытие. Warsaw Gallery Weekend заискрил многолюдностью. После съёмная квартира в Старом городе, вечеринка у Валентия и дружеские объятия с Никитой Каданом. Дальше доработки-тянучки, экскурсии, переводы, газета, фотодокументация. Вечерами Amatorska и суета.
1 октября Сармен ошарашил: я должен оплатить половину расходов за выставку. Неожиданно. Обещал подумать.
Обновлено (конец ноября 2024):
Всё-таки пришлось лишиться части работ в счёт трат. Монтаж продолжается, даже когда выставка уже открыта. Просто теперь он не в залах, а в теле, в пересборке границ, нервов и доверия.
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Персональная выставка Сергея Шабохина: Щель. Counter-Monumental Queer в Biuro Wystaw в Варшаве, кураторы: Анджей Вайс и Сармен Беглариан, 24 сентября – 22 ноября 2024
shabohin.org/SLIT