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Black Rainbow

Performative Criticism

Summary/Abstract: Julita Wójcik’s „Rainbow” is currently the most popular art installation in public space in Poland. Its renown is the result of the controversy that has surrounded it since it was placed on Savior’s Square in Warsaw. This indirectly contributed to „Rainbow” being set ablaze and burned five times since June 2012, most recently on November 11, 2013, when its burning became the most spectacular feature of Poland’s Independence Day celebrations. The author considers the possibility of treating the act of destroying „Rainbow” as a form of critical expression, placing it within the polemical practices used in contemporary art. Creative work which is meant to “invite discussion and disagreement” (Bauman) is programmatically aimed at initiating discourse and encouraging debate. The performative turn in artistic practices has also opened art up to interacting with audiences, who are provoked to participate and engage in individual, complementary acts of artistic expression. The actions of such “perfect performers”, as the text’s author calls the arsonists, fit into this practice. They have carried out an act of artistic creation through an act of destruction, which – in shaping the presented object – re-directed the potential interpretations of the object, affecting its shape and inscribing into it the element of ideological and political debate.

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