Does humanity need oxytocin now? In order to connect what has been disconnected. With Promethean strain and gimmick – Trickster’s trick.

Prometheus (whose name means ‚ingenious‘) is an embodiement of Trickster’s archetype. The archetype of an impostor and a swindler, playing an important role in the world creation. According to some opinions, it was due to Trickster’s actions that the world has never really worked as it should. While according to others, it is Trickster (e.g. Prometheus) who helps people to survive in a badly arranged world.

Trickster / Prometheus is the implicit hero / heroine of Aleka Polis’es project ‚Cycle Oxytocin‘. Its open manifest, as declared by the artist in the works exhibited, is acting in favour of connecting the opposites. Sewing together the world torn by a defective construction.

The title oxytocin, the first artificially synthesized neurohormone (so the modern medicine isn’t defined by idealistic and capitalistic prometheism), is not only a substance initiating childbirth (or enabling sexual activity for men). According to the newest research it is owing to its influence, that an unbreakable bond between parents and their newborn child is formed. So we can say that it is a hormone of bonds (what is further proved by the recent experiments, where thanks to oxyticin autistics started to connect with the surrounding world). Oxyticin is a symbol of the possibilities to connect, but at the same time it is not a name for the euphoria, that haunts the artist in cycles.

Aleka Polis has a detailed plan for using it in order to connect what is contradictory or perhaps, what has been insistently put in opposition under the pressure of badly appointed culture. Colour symbols of four races (the artist refers to the stereotypical image) are joined by her into a giant rectangular mandala painted on the wall. Its three -dimensional form is a tower (composed of cuboids in four symbolic colours), which signifies not only the bonds between races, but also between genders (for the artist the tower is both a male and a female symbol, like Witthenstein’s duckrabbit). The tower presented in the movie (right next to the mandala), falls apart as a result of Trikcster’s intervention, played by Aleka in disguise.

Therefore, Trickster is sewing together what he has separated. Although the artist doesn’t want to determine the ambivalence defining this archetype (in order to fix the world, it has to be out-of-order in the first place). The tower obtains the function for years, serving as a tool of introducing the light (Promethean fire). Movies from the cycle Herstoria show that the herstoria of improving the world shall be written with the lantern glow.

curator: Kamil Kuskowski, cooperation: Jarosław Lubiak

Actual Art Zona / Zona Sztuki Aktualnej
Tymienieckiego 3, Łódź
www.zona-art.pl