The Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle has opened the first solo exhibition in Poland of works by Sharon Lockhart. The exhibition, MILENA, MILENA, features works that are autobiographical as well as works that use Milena, a young girl Lockhart befriended in Lodz in 2009. Milena is an enigmatic figure who remains disquietly absent, distilling the different threads of identification in her very non-presence.
As an exhibition, MILENA, MILENA is both an affectionate beckoning (the parents’ call for the child to return home) as well as a poetic gesture of appreciation, an artistic tribute. Though the now 14-year-old girl does not appear in the film, her presence and charisma during production contributed significantly to Podworka’s evocative power and resonance. The exhibition’s poster portrays Milena as photographed by Lockhart in a spontaneous snapshot during the artist’s recent revisit to Lodz. In it, the various gestures of Lockhart’s exhibition at the Castle are accumulated: the refused act of looking, abused innocence and modesty, the potentiality of future dreams, and, last but not least, the desire for one’s own story.
The exhibition will be on view through August 18.