Aleksandra Kędziorek, Alicja Bielawska, CENTRALA: The Clothed Home: Tuning In to the Seasonal Imagination

This year, the Polish Pavilion at the London Design Biennale presents The Clothed Home: Tuning In to the Seasonal Imagination. Rooted in bygone Polish textile traditions and domestic rituals, the exhibition seeks to re-establish and cultivate a more attentive relationship with the natural world and its continuous changes. In the pre-electric era, before the accessibility of central heating and air-conditioning made residents inured to outdoor conditions, homes functioned as resonators helping them feel the cyclical rhythm of the year.

In manor houses, aristocratic mansions, and peasant cottages of pre-modern Poland, textiles were widely used as seasonal clothing for architecture. They helped adapt domestic spaces to the twelve phenological seasons characteristic of the central European climate zone. The recurring appearance of textiles in domestic interiors allowed the residents to consciously participate in the cycles of nature—celebrating the passage of time, with an enhanced sense of immersion in the circadian rhythm, and the sequence of light and darkness.

With this notion in mind, artist Alicja Bielawska, architects Małgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis of CENTRALA, and curator Aleksandra Kędziorek created an installation evoking a “clothed home.” While it is not an illustration of a time-specific space, it offers visitors of Somerset House a multi-sensory experience. Once inside the room, they are guided through the area by different weaves of textile e.g. hand-woven rugs, wall coverings, and kilims manufactured by local artisans using traditional weaving techniques and natural yarns. The color palette is inspired by the year-round observation of the Polish landscape. 

The exhibition advocates for a degree of openness to the discomfort of changing external conditions, and physicality, arguing that staying in tune with nature may help us hear better its fading pulse. “In this day and age, when many of us are cocooned in centrally heated apartments and air-conditioned offices, we have grown inured to the nuances of nature’s changing cycles. Contemporary design can help us tune into the seasons again,” adds Kędziorek.

The Clothed Home: Tuning In to the Seasonal Imagination, organised by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, was conceived by Małgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis of CENTRALA, curator Aleksandra Kędziorek, and artist Alicja Bielawska. The creator of the exhibition’s visual identification is Anna Kulachek, Artistic Director of the Strelka Institute, while Piotr Chuchla is behind the graphic design.

The curatorial concept of the Polish exhibition has been chosen via a nationwide competition organized by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute to select a proposal that would present Polish design thinking in response to the Biennale theme (“Resonance”).

The Polish Pavilion will be open to visitors from June 1–27, taking into account COVID safety protocols. Find out more: The Clothed Home at LDB 2021.

For any press requests or further information, please contact Marta Litynska at: mlitynska [​at​] iam.pl.