Katarzyna Zimna
Seedlings [online exhibition]
linocut on paper and agro-nonwoven fabric, various versions (2017-19), video (2020)
The series of miniature linocut prints entitled seedlings is a metaphor of the beginning and unlimited possibilities. The main ideas behind this project are: sharing, collaboration and community. While working on this series, I had this idea that a print, as an empty, cut out form, acts like a seedling – reaching its final appearance (and identity) depending on whose hands it hits, the type of ‘fill’, the way it is displayed. In case of this work, the possibility of multiplication, inherent to the medium of print, can be used to literally share art, as among gardeners sharing excess seedlings.
Seedlings, linocuts for colouring, Katarzyna Zimna Four seasons of anxiety, ODA Art Centre, Piotrkow Trybunalski; Municipal Art Gallery, Lodz, Poland
Seedlings, interactive installation and barter exchange, Riga Art Academy, Latvia, Paradox Forum 2019
Instruction for participants:
(on site)
1. Please leave your trace, fill your chosen seedling printed on the tablecloth by adding a bit of embroidery (in any way you wish to do it).
2. In exchange for your contribution please take one top print from the pile (these are original signed linocuts).
3. If you wish, the printout on paper can be open for your further intervention – you can colour it, fill it with drawing or writing, etc.
(online)
Due to the COVID pandemic my planned seedling project had to gain yet another manifestation – a virtual one. Thanks to this unexpected situation my work has become more personal as an act of sharing. Together with my family we shoot a short video showing this work in action.
seedlings, video (05:20), 2020
seedlings, scanned linocut prints on paper, images for download
Thanks to the Internet seedlings can be shared and distributed widely, becoming immaterial, and then being given a new ‘body’ – somewhere else, by someone else.
Scanned images of seedlings on paper can be downloaded to be printed on paper as postcards, used for colouring, to create a pattern or printed on fabric and filled with embroidery, and so on.
Katarzyna Zimna
Artist and researcher, born in Lodz, Poland. Graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Lodz, Faculty of Graphic Art and Painting (2002), and Faculty of Visual Education (2004). She obtained her PhD from the School of Art and Design, Loughborough University, UK in 2010. Habilitation in Fine Arts in 2019. Author of the book Time to Play. Action and Interaction in Contemporary Art (I.B. Tauris, 2014 / Bloomsbury 2020). Participant in numerous group and juried shows in Poland and abroad; author of 13 solo shows. In 2017 established Femigraphic collective with Irena Keckes (Croatia/USA). The ontology of print is the main focus of her practice, which also includes textile, object and interactive art. Since 2011 adjunct professor at the Institute of Architecture of Textiles at the Lodz University of Technology.
Kant, aesthetics and contemporary art 