Landscapes of Absence — opening performance
Performance by Martyna Miller opening her solo show "Landscapes of Lack" curated by Tomek Pawłowski Jarmołajew in Baltic Gallery for Contemporary Art in Ustka.
The exhibition “Landscapes of Absence” presents the archive of the project “The Lack of Forest”. The project has been developed by Martyna Miller since 2018 in the Tuchola Forest, where in 2017 a violent storm swept through the area, destroying vast stretches of woodland and permanently marking the life of the local community.
Miller creates a material and social archive of this event, searching for forms of eco-commemoration and ways of working through the collective trauma connected to the ecological catastrophe. The exhibition brings together works and artifacts produced over several years of research and artistic practice. Alongside wood and objects found at the site of the storm, the exhibition includes ceramic works, paintings, installations, texts, photographs, as well as sound and film materials.
This multimedia archive, composed of diverse objects, functions as a form of remembrance and transmission of history. All of these elements together create an alternative mythology of the place and its community — a story about resilience and the possibility of transformation, and about how even in a space defined by absence, new forms of life and community can emerge.