Countinuouslessness Countinuouslessness

It is a paradoxical truism that the only constant is change itself. How might this notion of continuity-in-change relate to cultural difference? Employing primarily sculpture, Kasia Fudakowski’s works draw upon the paradoxes of cultural history to playfully assert typologies, archetypes and stereotypes of genders, nations and ethnic legacies. These notions of difference are employed and subverted – with a humorous and nimble touch – in order to point out the unexpected continuities and interdependencies among neighbouring individuals, histories and identities. Difference becomes commonality in Fudakowski’s work Continueouslessness (2017). For this piece, she has constructed a series of ten panels that stand side by side in a room, forming a screen or wall divider.

The work’s title suggests a sense of constancy through change (a ‘coalition of chaos’, in the artist’s words) and presents a functioning – yet incongruous – union of different parts, wheeled and interlinked. Each panel is marked by a distinct style as well as ornamental detailing, creating an intentionally jarring sequence of designs and aesthetics. The first three panels adopt the style of decorative fencing for low-income rural homes in Poland, which is then mirrored by the use of industry off-cuts sourced in Turkey in the next. Two panels represent, for the artist, a recently separated couple who despite their division, still share a common sense of outrage. Another slapstick panel takes the form of a rotating doorway made from horizontally mounted Turkish brooms. One panel recalls security grates on shops, which morph in and out of recognisable forms, hanging on a communal carpet-beating structure. A ‘host’ character is found in the copper belly suspended from another panel, breast-like glasses cascading over its shoulder. A ‘bride’ panel, meanwhile, nervously chews on her cigarette, releasing bilious, billowing smoke as she holds a bouquet of Mother-in-laws’ tongues.

A barrier as much as a union, the series plays up character types while constructing a nominal ‘world family’, pointing out the conditions of interdependence that persist within today’s atomised groups and communities. Serial, unfinished and potentially endless, the work’s infinite permutation of interdependent forms represents an awkward, if necessary, holding of hands.