PUC UNLATENT

[…] The impact of socialisation and internalised norms and conventions on perceiving and expressing the world is the subject of a project based on the cooperation of two people, an adult man and a six-year-old boy. Focusing on issues such as the unrestricted expression of a child in the face of cultural codes and institutional conventions, Piotr Blajerski and PUC created the PUC UNLATENT installation, which consists of a mural based on the boy’s drawings inspired by the venue and a video documenting the entire process. For PUC, drawing is an important form of expressing his individual and unique perception of the world. When confronted with the space of the hospital, the boy sketched a world of sick lynxes, full of surprising and disturbing illustrations of pain. By inviting a child to co-create the project, Blajerski referred to our projections about the boundless and unfettered imagination of a small child, which turn out to be a fantasy about transcending culture. The artist perceives acculturation as a painful process based on violence; creating order, or ordering narratives, is viewed by him as being inextricably correlated with violence. PUC’s work can be naively interpreted through the prism of fantasies of culturally mature adults concerning a manner of expression that has not been formatted by social norms. On the other hand, the very format of the festival imposes the obligation to create a “work,” which calls into question the independence and agency of the young artist. PUC UNLATENT casts doubt on the very possibility of such cooperation, which is stretched between the duty of care, mentorship and respect for the individuality and subjectivity of the child while being supposed to “reveal” the latter. […]

Małgorzata Miśniakiewicz: Concealed. In: Art Reviev SURVIVAL 17. Catalogue, Wrocław 2019, p. 86-87.

photo: Małgorzata Kujda