yola

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réalisé avec le soutien de:
- Institut Polonais Paris http://www.institutpolonais.fr/
- Espace Canopy http://www.labelette.info/
- Echomusee – Jean Marc Bombeau & friends
- Feisty Frog – http://feistyfrogproductions.com/ – Agnieszka Lesiewicz
- DPN Production – Philipe Dubois – Matthieu Blaise
- la SIEMP
- Mairie 18
- Delphine Musseau, Daisy Reillet , Celine Trinquet, Veronique Rosa, Mathieu Lis
- association LE M.U.R – lakomune.org – Valentin Bechade, Guillaume, Freddy, Hélène
- enorme merci a Dominique Rabier de Grima Nacelles !
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The meaning of the original painting “Vicious Circle” by a Polish Symbolist painter Jacek Malczewski, is rooted deeply in the Polish tradition, in which a circular dance often symbolizes human life entangled in history. Battling with their own precarious political history, Poles have always been a nation of migrants, escaping persecution in their own country and searching for a new haven abroad.

In Yola’s interpretation Vicious Circle symbolizes the universal problems of contemporary migrants who, in search of hope and a better life, invariably come up against every day obstacles, loneliness, alienation and rejection.

She has transplanted the image to the streets of Buenos Aires, one of the biggest and most diverse melting pots in the world. The actors in Jola’s image are friends she met in Buenos Aires – Argentine, French, Colombian and American, with roots in places as diverse as Italy, Spain, Russia, Poland, Ukraine and Romania.

The Buenos Aires street artist Jaz opened his workshop to Jola and suggested a collaboration on a wall in a busy street of BA’s vibrant district of Palermo. He invited two street artists: Other from Canada and Corona from France to join them.

Vicious Circle can be seen in Sanchez de Bustamante y Charcas in Buenos Aires

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more about this project:

http://graffitimundo.com/new-art/jola-vicious-circle/

http://www.buenosairesstreetart.com/2011/05/vicious-circle-yola-recreates-polish.html

http://www.whatsupbuenosaires.com/news/A_Street_Art_Renaissance

It was the Renaissance that has started my appreciation of painting and I don’t think it was accidental. I think a lot of young artists fall in love with the Renaissance, this is where they discover perspective, learn light composition. Then for me came Art Nouveau, Schiele, and of course, the turn of the 21 century.

In paining, putting well known and recognisable icons and symbols in a contemporary context is nothing new. Artists have been doing it for centuries. It’s like finger exercises, a dialogue with the masters, but everyone wants to interpret those themes in their own way. It’s a bit like making movies about love, the subject is always the same, but the execution is different each time.
Going back to painting – let’s take Venus of Urbino for instance – Titian painted her in 1538 and it was quite revolutionary then. He painted her in a completely different context to the ones accepted in those days. Because Venus was a Greek goddess, she should be frolicking in a white gown in the clouds of the Mount Olympus and not pose naked in some Florentine mansion. A few centuries later (1863) a guy named Eduard Manet casts in the role of Venus a well known and not so well respected prostitute. Shock horror.
A few more centuries on, Jola Kudela adds her interpretation to the mix. But it’s not only about messing around with the form.

Each of those images has its meaning, the original one, i.e. “what was the poet’s intention all those centuries ago”, as well as my own, my commentary or interpretation. Saint Sebastian for instance – a Roman soldier tortured to death because of his sexual orientation. It’s an image and a symbol that has been interpreted millions of times in paintings, photography and film. Instead of being a Roman soldier, my Saint Sebastian is a modern person in black underwear, half-girl, half-boy, the so-called troisieme sex, persecuted for being different, for not fitting in. My Sebastian is being attacked with darts that symbolise “play”, being ridiculed, laughed at. But those darts can also hurt, they cut deep and leave scars, they exclude.

I have chosen the paintings in such a way that every person with an average knowledge of art history would be able to recognise the original it refers to and to understand the dialogue with the original. Renaissance artists (they weren’t an exception of course) invited their contemporaries to do the modelling for them. Very often these decisions were highly controversial: a painter would paint a dignitary and put him in a crowd of “saints” consisting of local down-and-outs or other dubious characters. Hence my desire to include locals from the Warsaw’s district of Praga in my images, as in the image of Christ, and the idea to involve people from a local day centre. I found the centre through Malgosia Zarzycka and Edyta Piasecka who collaborated with me on the project.
The project took seed in Paris and then lay dormant in a drawer, or rather on a hard-drive, for a while. Then, thanks to Malgosia Zarzycka and Jacek Schmidt, it suddenly blossomed in a truly renaissance way.

The spots to hang the images had been chosen with the street party of Zabkowska Street in mind, so the visitors could see those places during their stroll around and perceive the happening as an open gallery. I always make sure the surroundings of my visuals complement the image and interact with it. The majority of my images found their place near Zabkowska Street with one, or say three, exceptions. One of those was Pieta. The image found its place further away, near Sprzeczna Street, because of the exceptional beauty of the location. An old wall with remains of crumbling flats, crumbling life-stories, becomes an integral part of Pieta’s background, while the courtyard transforms into a chapel.
I remember a poignant moment during the hanging of the image – a pedestrian approached us, took the image in, lowered his head, crossed himself and said after a short silence: ‘it’s very beautiful, is it going to stay here? Thank you, thank you very much, it’s beautiful’, and he walked away…
It was very moving to see his reaction.

Contact with the local models gave me loads of positive energy and a conviction that in such joint effort one can find happiness and joy. These are the true roots of the project, the Renaissance form of Neo-Platonism, practiced by Botticelli, who believed in reaching eternal happiness through beauty and love. I didn’t think of eternal happiness while working on this project, but I wanted to enrich Praga with a bit of beauty and joy. At the end it was the other way round – it was Praga and its inhabitants who brought a lot of fun, joy, laughter and satisfaction into my life.
Inviting the folks from the day centre was supposed to be a slightly subversive act: as if entering a haven for Fallen Angels, all aged 60 or over, who end up in a day centre because they can’t cope with life in society. The society they contributed to throughout their lives and which now pays them back a pittance, not enough for a decent living. To be honest I was expecting human misery and what I found instead was a bunch of happy people. I think it’s mainly thanks to the lady who runs the centre, who gives those lost souls a lot of warmth and affection, creating a place where they can shelter from loneliness.
Why not accidental people from the street? Partly for logistical reasons, it’s difficult and time-consuming to accost strangers in the street, but mostly because in my project I wanted to highlight the notion of rejection and tolerance as well as differences and acceptance of other human beings.

METROPOLIS
Une galerie
Les rues de Paris, à l’occasion, se transforment en véritable galerie d’art à ciel ouvert. On se l’est dit à plusieurs reprises ces derniers jours, en tombant un peu par hasard, dans notre onzième mais dans d’autres arrondissements aussi, sur des dessins qu’on aime plutôt bien, placardés un peu partout dehors. Dans une esthétique qui emprunte à la fois au manga, à la peinture expressionniste et au cinéma noir, ils transposent des scènes de la vie quotidienne dans un métro parisien peuplé des personnages du coup comme figés par les tumultes de la ville environnante.

On se demandait qui donc avait bien pu dessiner cela. Grâce à la signature de l’auteur figurant au bas du dessin, on a pu retrouver sa trace sur le net. Il s’agit de Yola, une artiste d’origine polonaise installée à Paris depuis six ans. Avec une autre artiste (Gersende Crepel), dont on voit beaucoup les petites créatures curieuses sur les murs de la capitale en ce moment, les deux jeunes femmes mènent des «actions d’encollage artistique» dans des quartiers comme le Marais, les Halles, les Abbesses, etc.

Ce faisant, elles revendiquent que les murs de la ville deviennent «une espèce d’espace accessible à tous, une poésie urbaine libre». Et d’expliquer la démarche: «Déambuler, coller des photos, des morceaux de papier ici et là sur des pans de murs qui s’offrent à nous», c’est créer «un art en liaison avec le quotidien, expression directe et sincère».

«Touche pas à mon image! Respecte la création!» A l’occasion, dans ce qui constitue un savoureux retournement de situation, les deux jeunes femmes vont jusqu’à interpeller les passants qui dégradent leurs créations. Un vandalisme il est vrai aussi gratuit qu’idiot. Ces œuvres d’art, en effet, pour ce qu’on a pu en voir en tout cas, paraissent toujours collées très proprement et à des endroits qui ne peuvent que s’en trouver très embellis (murs aveugles, palissades sans intérêt, etc.). Le fait même qu’ils ne soient que collés leur confère d’ailleurs une certaine poésie. A l’inverse de ces grafs lourdement et plus durablement peinturlurés – et par ailleurs souvent moins intéressants voire un brin fatigants par leur narcissisme («Je suis passé ici, donc je signe») –, ces personnages de papier qui prennent vie sous nos yeux et peuplent les murs dans la ville n’y vivent que peu de temps, disparaissant sous les assauts conjugués de l’usure, des intempéries et de la concurrence d’autres créations les recouvrant. Ces éphémères Parisiens de papier n’en ont que plus de charme.
http://parislibre.lalibreblogs.be/