Artur Zmijewski’s video works possess a staged documentary character, confronting the photographed subjects with a conflict. In the current piece the artist explores the soldiers’ response to the embarrassing, experimental situation of nudity during their job routine. The work strives to expose the fragile, vulnerable body hiding under the rigid uniform. It is a type of child-like prank intended to ridicule the drill’s gravity, to break conventions, and present a different facet of normative military manhood. The subversive comical nudity also functions as a means reinstating the soldiers with autonomy over their bodies. They are no longer a part of the military hierarchy, but rather individuals who belong to themselves, and the uniform removing act reveals the human side unique to each.

Zmijewski began his artistic career in the early 1990s at the Faculty of Sculpture of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He gradually abandoned the practice of sculpture, but continues to rely heavily on the human body in many of his video and photographic works. Zmijewski does not seek the ideal body, but rather a human body, whether ordinary-looking or deformed: “More important than nakedness itself is the truth showing through it – about the person, and the private history inscribed in the body. [. . .] You soon forget these people are naked. Nakedness stops being unusual, and becomes obvious, ordinary, and acceptable.”

Artur Zmijewski (1966) was born in Warsaw, Poland. Lives and works in Poland.

Courtesy Peter Kilchmann Gallery, Zurich

Less Reading...