FETISH

An autobiography of Polish artist Malga Kubiak in praise of everything aesthetically in your face, confrontational, against the grist of good bourgeois taste and sense – punk camp trash, tacky, cheesy, cheap and maybe even treacly. An epic ego trip which turns one person’s experience into a tale of many.

It all starts with Malga Kubiak herself, as it so often does in her art. For Kubiak, letting the self rip relentlessly and without inhibitions is her modus operandi. Not for nothing did she call her 1989 7+ hour collection containing a decade’s worth of videos The Ego Trip – much like how she now calls this new work FETISH.

Kubiak loves aggression and porn, everything aesthetically in your face, confrontational, against the grist of good bourgeois taste and sense – punk camp trash, tacky, cheesy, cheap and maybe even treacly. VHS in all its consumer-level, static SD lyricism can feel as if it had been invented only for her. And she’s not alone in that. There are Antii Gonna, Pepe Le Puke, Aleksandra Kluczyk, Simona Kasprowicz and Aleksandra Szczodry, all queer artists just like her, who all have their place in the creation of this cri du cœur. Because being on an ego trip doesn’t mean you don’t embrace solidarity and the warmth of your fellow fighters against capitalism and all it stands for.

– Olaf Möller

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