Herbalife
/10
- Herbalife
- 2023
- installation, group of 16 works, mixed media, various dimensions
Cezary Bodzianowski’s work with teabags dates back to the early 1990s, when the artist studied in Antwerp. At that time, he used teabags to stage constructions reminiscent of dominos ready to fall over. 2011 then saw Bodzianowski produce an exhibition at a former tea storage building in Bristol’s Spike Island district. He made a costume in the form of an enlarged teabag and shot a video in which he was shown wearing it in the city’s public spaces. The artist also used the teabag as one of a series of surreal objects connected with other aspects of everyday life. This particular object is associated with afternoon tea rituals as moments to take a break and relax. While tea prepared in a glass is likewise among the attributes of any office in Poland, the teabag is also a metaphor for the activities pursued by the artist himself—suspended in the everyday, which is thus lent color and taste. In the process, however, the teabag becomes a useless byproduct of preparing the brew. This metaphor is elaborated upon in one of the artist’s poems: “The artist, in creating art, involuntarily becomes the essence of art itself, drawing from it and from himself, pursuing it and himself, escaping from it and from himself by creating with his whole self until he dissolves into the boundless ocean of art.”
D.M.
D.M.