Imagine Me Complexly

One of the realities we face as human beings is that life is complex. We are constantly striving and seeking to understand the world around us and our place in it. A complex,multi-layered narrative that progresses through the spaces of the QUT Art Museum, Tales Within Historical Spaces marks a quest for identity for Polish-Australian artist Beata Batorowicz's solo exhibition. The Tale practically reads like a book.

The Tale opens with the title piece, featuring a quaint illustration of a girl dressed as a fox, painted on a background of a stark white Poland, suitably setting the scene for the show. These trees are hung across the dark grey walls of the first room, casting an initially cold, sombre mood. Appropriately, Batorowicz starts to bridge the gap between her present and past by reaching out geographically. Her first impression of the Poland she left behind was of the bare winter trees covered in winter's frost.

The motif of the Cunning Fox was in fact derived from the traditional Polish faerie tales that she grew up hearing as bedtime stories. An enchanting series of storybook illustrations like the fox-girl line the wall. In most western tales, the Fox was the sly, cunning figure whose wily ways were always trumped by characters of virtue. Poland's tales don't offer such a security blanket of hope. They are honest about life's harsh realities and who could be surprised, when they were written from inside Auschwitz? As such, the fox's cunning nature frequently serves him well. Batorowicz places herself in the guise of the fox; the polish hero, in an effort to understand a vital piece of her cultural identity through the language of her childhood.

Tales Within Historical Spaces Beata Batorowicz 2011
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This playfulness echoes about the exhibition, with a series of animal masks, fox tails (punny, right?) and costumes, all thoughtfully placed and lit for effect though a careful collaboration with the curators at QUT. This is my first experience seeing such care taken in the presentation of artworks, and I have to say, they really did the work justice. From creating a narrative flow throughout the exhibition, right down to the tiniest details of where each light should cast its shadow on the Animal Heads On a stick series, QUT's efforts, combined with Batorowicz vision was flawless.

Animals on a stick from the Little Art series - Beata Batorowicz 2008-10
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The plot thickens with the introduction of some sombre-looking prints. Auschwitz documents, blown up to double their original size, identification papers, and a beautiful photograph of the artist's grandmother, the gritty side of the story, grounded in a harsh reality, surfaces. Referencing such raw historic events might seem clumsy or naïve. If the creator had been an unaffected party, clumsiness might have been an appropriate word to use. However, Batorowicz approaches this particular historic event that saw her family eventually leave their Polish home with the honest, earnest curiosity of her five-year-old self. This is a quest for her identity, and it is clear that the event that so drastically affected the lives of her grandparents has shaped a part of her too.

The final room of the exhibition holds a single, monumental work; a tribute to the late Joseph Beuys, a german artist Batorowicz refers to as her 'surrogate father'. A giant pair of suspenders, worn and fraying, dominate the last dark space. The darkened walls signal the last chapter, the back cover of the book has been reached. The story ends on this epiloguous tribute to the artist that inspired her journey.

It has been argued that Batarowicz' body of work might be a little too complex. I would argue that it isn't. If art exhibitions were novels, Tales Within Historical Spaces would be praised as the breath of fresh air amidst an ocean of visual fluff. QUT sets the bar high for honest, faithful curatorship, and Batorowicz's work shines as a result. Her work is comprehensive, challenging, and sometimes more complex than the average gallery-goer is prepared for. But at the end of the day, it's up to the viewer to do her work justice by imagining her complexly.